A new poll shows former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes has more name recognition than any other candidate for governor, but he isn't Democratic voters' clear first choice.
The post Marquette poll: Hong, Barnes top Democratic primary for governor, but most voters undecided appeared first on WPR.
With just a few weeks left in Wisconsin’s legislative season, GOP leaders and Gov. Tony Evers are discussing a possible deal on lowering property taxes. But a split among GOP leadership could sink any agreement.
The post With legislative session nearing end, Evers, GOP leaders at odds on tax deal appeared first on WPR.
Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann has dropped out of the Republican primary for governor in Wisconsin, one day after he failed to receive the endorsement of President Donald Trump.
The post Republican Josh Schoemann drops out of Wisconsin governor’s race appeared first on WPR.
Republicans insist much of the surplus is one-time money and the state can’t afford the relief.
The post Gov. Evers: State budget surplus allows for both school funding, property tax relief appeared first on WPR.
Democratic and Republican candidates for governor appeared for a joint forum in early November. Shown are, from left, Matt Smith of WISN-12, Francesca Hong, Sara Rodriguez, Kelda Roys, David Crowley and Missy Hughes, all Democrats, and Josh Schoemann, a Republican. Republican Tom Tiffany did not participate. Since that event two more Democrats have entered the contest, former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes and former cabinent member Joel Brennan. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
A popular two-term governor decides to retire, and triggers a flood of prospective replacements. Democrats vow to flip the Republican-majority Legislature. A state Supreme Court race blows the doors off spending records, and another one is waiting in the wings.
Each of those could be considered a big story by itself in Wisconsin, but they’re all part of this year’s single biggest story in government and politics. And that story — that it was a really big year for Wisconsin politics — wasn’t just about 2025: It set the stage for 2026.
The three-stories-in-one about Wisconsin politics are just the beginning of the news that flooded our pages in 2025. Wisconsin Examiner’s five-person staff published 550 stories in 2025, a total that includes opinion columns by Editor Ruth Conniff, but doesn’t include briefs that also appeared under the bylines of Conniff, Erik Gunn, Isiah Holmes, Henry Redman, Baylor Spears and Criminal Justice Fellows Andrew Kennard and Frank Zufall.
Herewith, then, our list of 10 big stories that the Wisconsin Examiner covered over the course of the last year.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers put an end to the last Wisconsin governor’s quest for a third term when he defeated Republican Scott Walker in 2018. Midway through his own second term, Evers surprised many by deciding to call it quits when his current term ends rather than run again.
The decision created the first open race for governor in more than a decade and opened the floodgates, with a bevy of Democrats entering the fray. By contrast, the Republican field was down to two at year’s end, with one early contender dropping out after the entry of Congressman Tom Tiffany.
In the Wisconsin Legislature, Democrats, having narrowed the Republicans’ majority in 2024 thanks to new maps that undid the state’s 15 years of GOP gerrymandering, launched twin efforts to flip both the Assembly and the Senate in 2026. Republicans vowed to maintain their majority in both houses.
The new Senate and Assembly maps were made possible after the 2023 state Supreme Court election flipped the seven-member Court’s ideological majority from conservative to liberal. With the balance of the Court at stake again after liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley retired in 2025, Democrats went all out, electing Dane County Judge Susan Crawford to the nominally nonpartisan Court and handily overcoming the efforts of billionaire Elon Musk who spent millions supporting Crawford’s opponent, former state Attorney General Brad Schimel. The contest set both state and national records for campaign spending in a U.S. judicial election, and maintained the one-vote liberal majority. Now supporters of the current Court majority have their eyes on extending that ideological advantage in 2026.
Chris Taylor, currently a District IV appeals court judge and a former Democratic state representative, is running to succeed sharply conservative Rebecca Bradley. Bradley opted not to seek a new term on the Court, and conservative Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar has announced plans to seek the post.
Evers went into the 2025-27 state budget process with an ambitious list of goals. Lengthy negotiations between the Democratic governor and Republican lawmakers produced a deal. While the final result fell well short of his original vision, Evers claimed victory nevertheless, with gains on paper for child care funding and for public school special education funding.
Both, however, left their strongest advocates disappointed, and by the end of the year, the special education funding did not live up to the promises made when the budget was signed.
The budget’s lack of additional school aid for regular classes was especially upsetting to public school advocates, and was exacerbated by the state’s expanding school choice systems that use tax dollars to pay for private schools and charter schools outside the common public schools. It also underscored the extent to which local communities have been voting to raise their own property taxes to support their school systems.
The defeat of some school referendum requests further accentuated the sense of crisis, while Republican lawmakers called for new restrictions on the referendum process. And in the state’s largest system, Milwaukee Public Schools, an audit called for sweeping changes in response to a range of challenges, from declining enrollments and staff turnover to the continuing pressure of having to fund the parallel voucher and charter systems.
Throughout the year, the state Department of Public Instruction came under intense scrutiny from Republican lawmakers over policies ranging from school performance evaluations to the handling of sexual abuse complaints against school employees.
With the inauguration of President Donald Trump to a second term in the White House, the fallout from new federal actions reached Wisconsin in a myriad of ways. The giant legislation to cut taxes (mostly for the wealthy) and spending (much of it for health care) that Trump signed in July was one cause, setting the stage for future cuts to Medicaid and to health care under the Affordable Care Act, while also imposing new restrictions on programs aimed at reducing hunger.
But there were other reductions as well, some coming from the actions of the “Department of Government Efficiency” or DOGE that Trump authorized, and others from unilateral — and often legally challenged — actions by the administration itself. Clean energy and climate change projects, scientific research, education assistance, help with removing lead from public schools, community service, child care, economic policies, numerous federal agencies and the federal workforce itself along with countless other federal initiatives were swept up in the administration’s first year.
The record-long federal shutdown — when Congress failed to agree on a temporary spending plan and the GOP majority refused to extend extra tax breaks for Affordable Care Act health plans into 2026 — added to the chaos, with a temporary halt to the federal SNAP food assistance program.
Wisconsinites joined people from across the country in the recurring protests that started just weeks into the Trump presidency, culminating in the Oct. 18 “No Kings” rallies from coast to coast that some analysts identified as the largest mass protest ever in the United States.
The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown reverberated in Wisconsin from Inauguration Day. At the start of this term, Editor Ruth Conniff traveled to Mexico, documenting the longstanding relationships Wisconsin farmers have had with migrants who provide 70% of the labor that the state’s dairy industry has relied on.
Republican lawmakers called for cementing the state’s relationship with the newly unleashed Immigration and Customs Enforcement — ICE — agency , while the Evers administration resisted those calls. Individual counties signed on to assist ICE, sometimes facing opposition, but while Wisconsin was less in the national spotlight than other states, it wasn’t immune to periodic episodes of immigration enforcement.
Visa cancellations caught up students from overseas, and migrant arrests rose across the state. Immigration enforcement officers focused on the Milwaukee County Courthouse in their search for immigrants to take into custody, prompting criticism from advocates who warned the result would drive migrants underground rather than encouraging them to show up for court dates as witnesses, plaintiffs or defendants.
After a four-day trial in December, Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan was convicted on a felony charge of obstruction but acquitted of a misdemeanor charge of concealing a man who had appeared in her courtroom in April and was targeted by immigration officials. The case had national repercussions as the Trump administration targets judges it sees as opponents to its policies.
In Wisconsin a statewide — indeed, nationwide — the rush to embrace massive data centers to serve emerging artificial intelligence-based technology sparked widespread debate over water use, electricity demands and power generation.
Meanwhile, a longstanding and widely popular land preservation program — the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship fund — hovered on the verge of collapse as Republican lawmakers demanded the power to veto stewardship decisions after a state Supreme Court ruling in 2024 removed the Legislature from the process.
After a running battle against rerouting an Enbridge oil pipeline, the Army Corps of Engineers approved permits for the project over the strenuous objections of opponents, only to be sued by the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa.
A standoff between the Evers administration and the Legislature’s Republican leaders over how to address PFAS “forever chemicals” was eased by a state Supreme Court ruling allowing the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to apply Wisconsin’s spills law to PFAS contamination, along with a bipartisan bill that would require the DNR to notify local and tribal officials about groundwater PFAS contamination.
A lengthy investigation by Isiah Holmes of the Wisconsin Examiner in partnership with Type Investigations documented how the Milwaukee Area Investigative Team, assigned to probe death investigations for people killed by metro Milwaukee police officers, use protocols that grant officers privileges not afforded to the general public.
Among many other issues involving policing and law enforcement in Wisconsin, police surveillance was a recurring matter, with debates arising over facial recognition technology, department interest in expanding phone-tracking resources and increasing attention to how police agencies make use of widespread surveillance cameras.
Evers’ budget proposal included a sweeping plan for prison reform, but the result was more limited, leaving advocates dissatisfied. One concrete element is the start of a project to close the Green Bay Correctional Institution, a longtime objective, but divisions remain between the governor and GOP lawmakers about the details.
With the return of President Donald Trump to the White House, the conspiracy theories that were amplified after his reelection loss in November 2020 got a new burst of energy. The Wisconsin Elections Commission twice rejected an administration demand for the personal identifying information of Wisconsin voters.
Trump issued a largely symbolic pardon of the Republicans who signed certificates falsely stating he won the 2020 presidential election in Wisconsin, while a Dane County judge kept alive a criminal case against three men charged with orchestrating the fake elector scheme.
Although bipartisan lawmakers in the Assembly sought common ground over absentee ballot drop boxes and a measure to allow election clerks to begin counting absentee ballots on the Monday before Election Day, their efforts stalled.
August flooding in Southeast Wisconsin that followed torrential storms and was centered on the metro Milwaukee area left behind devastation, damaging nearly 2,000 homes and some $34 million worth of public infrastructure.
The Trump administration’s Federal Emergency Management Agency approved $30 million in initial relief to support the victims of flood damage, but the administration denied a subsequent request for aid to mitigate future disasters.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
Mandela Barnes shouldn’t expect the Democratic primary field to clear for him in the Wisconsin governor’s race like it did when he ran for Senate, close watchers of the election say.
One reason why? Some anxious Democrats are worried about Barnes’ loss in the Senate race in 2022.
Barnes, the former lieutenant governor, lost to Sen. Ron Johnson in 2022 by just one percentage point. On the same ballot, Gov. Tony Evers won reelection by more than 3 percentage points. There’s still angst and unease for not capturing that Senate win, close watchers say.
“There might not be any issue that divides Democrats more” than Barnes’ electability, said Barry Burden, who runs the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
The crowded primary field includes Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, state Sen. Kelda Roys, state Rep. Francesca Hong, former Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. CEO Missy Hughes and former state Rep. Brett Hulsey. Earlier this month, Evers’ former aide, Joel Brennan, jumped into the race too.
Whoever wins is likely to face U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the leading Republican candidate, who has routinely targeted Barnes on social media. Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann is also running.
Barnes has the highest name recognition among the primary candidates and is widely considered to be the front-runner. An October poll released prior to Barnes’ campaign announcement placed him at 16% support in the primary, the highest of any candidate included in the survey.
“Mandela Barnes is the most known and by far the most popular candidate,” said Molly Murphy, a pollster for Barnes’ campaign, adding that he has a “decisive lead over everyone else in the field.”
Even so, Democrats in the state say this isn’t a done deal.
“I don’t think anybody, including Mandela, is that prohibitive a favorite the way that Evers was at the top of the field and Mandela was at the top of the field in those two primaries over the last eight years,” said Sachin Chheda, a Milwaukee-based Democratic strategist who is not affiliated with any candidate. It’s a “wide open field.”
Barnes ran away with the primary in 2022, winning nearly 78% of the vote; his most competitive challenger, Milwaukee Bucks Executive Alex Lasry, dropped out of the race ahead of the primary and endorsed him. Barnes’ general election campaign, however, was inundated with attacks from the right that proved successful.
Barnes’ campaign staff blamed the 2022 results in part on insufficient support from national Democrats to match outside spending by Republicans on attack ads — though some, like Burden, question whether money would have “made a difference.”
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee donated $51,200 to his campaign in 2022 — the same amount they gave to nine other Senate candidates, per Open Secrets.
The national campaign arm for Democratic governors has pledged to stay out of the primary contest.
The Democratic Governors Association is “excited about this strong bench of candidates and look forward to helping elect whoever Wisconsinites nominate to be their next governor,” said spokesperson Olivia Davis.
Barnes does have connections with major figures in the national party, though. Since 2023, Barnes has led a voting rights organization, Power to the Polls, and a renewable energy nonprofit. Earlier this month he was endorsed by U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff of California.
“People wrote me off from the very beginning, people wrote me off in the primary in that race. And we defied expectations, and I would not have been able to defy those expectations if it were not for the groundswell of support that I had going into it,” Barnes told another local outlet this month.
Murphy, the president of Impact Research, said that governor’s races are “a different ecosystem” from Senate campaigns. “No two cycles are the same; 2022 was very much a referendum on national leadership,” she said.
For now, name recognition and previous fundraising experience make Barnes the front-runner, said Joe Zepecki, a Democratic strategist based in Wisconsin. Still, Zepecki said, there are more incentives for the other candidates to stay in the race this time.
“I don’t think anybody anticipates a rerun of ’22 where other Democrats just kind of get out of the way a couple of weeks before the primary,” he said.
Another reason he expects the field to stay mostly intact? Because Democrats have a good shot at securing a trifecta in Wisconsin in 2026, and the chance to be governor while the party holds control is more appealing than being one of 100 senators.
There’s also the hand-wringing over electability.
“My reaction and the reaction of some other people I know who were quite involved in politics was, ‘Oh man, I hope he decides not to (run),’” said Mary Arnold, co-chair of the Columbia County Democrats, which covers the communities between Madison and Wisconsin Dells. “He’s going to overshadow the field, and I don’t know if that’s going to be a good thing.”
That concern may be isolated to political insiders, Zepecki said.
“Then there’s real people. …The further I go out from my circle of political friends, the more enthusiasm for Barnes I hear,” he said.
This story was produced and originally published by Wisconsin Watch and NOTUS, a publication from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute.
Mandela Barnes called early Democratic front-runner, but Wisconsin governor’s race could be ‘wide open’ 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.
Joel Brennan, former top Cabinet official for Gov. Tony Evers, has joined the Democratic primary for governor, vowing to “stand up to Trump’s dysfunction” and be “laser-focused” on improving people’s lives if elected.
In a campaign launch video released Thursday, Brennan discussed growing up with 10 siblings in Wisconsin in a family that was “long on potential, although sometimes a little short on resources.” Brennan talks about working a variety of jobs to get through college and boasts that his first car didn’t even have working taillights.
Brennan described getting a call from Evers in 2018, asking him to lead the Department of Administration “as his top Cabinet official.” Brennan served in that role from 2019 through 2021. During that time, he said the administration put the state on firmer financial footing and generated a state budget surplus of nearly $4 billion. He also said the administration “stood up to the extremists” and offered assistance to thousands of small businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“But today, thanks to Donald Trump’s chaos and incompetence, the numbers just aren’t adding up for Wisconsin families,” Brennan says in the video. “Costs, like everything else, are out of control. And coming from a family that had to make every dollar count, I know what that feels like.”
Brennan’s video ends with a nod to the race for the Legislature, where Democrats are hoping to flip Republican majorities for the first time in more than a decade. He said with “fair maps” and a Democratic governor, “we can stay true to our values and deliver change.”
Brennan is currently the president of the Greater Milwaukee Committee. Prior to joining Evers’ administration, he was CEO of the Discovery World museum for 11 years. He also worked previously for the Redevelopment Authority of Milwaukee and the Greater Milwaukee Convention and Visitors Bureau. He was a legislative assistant to Democrat Tom Barrett when Barrett served in Congress.
Brennan joins an already crowded field of Democrats vying for the party’s nomination. Other candidates to announce include Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, Madison state Sen. Kelda Roys, Madison state Rep. Francesca Hong, former Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. CEO Missy Hughes and former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes.
Only two Republicans — U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, R-Minocqua, and Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann — are running for the GOP nomination at this point. It’s been reported that former Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels, who lost to Evers in 2022, and former Republican U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde, who lost to Tammy Baldwin in 2024, are also considering entering the 2026 race for governor.
This story was originally published by WPR.
Joel Brennan, former top Tony Evers aide, enters race for Wisconsin governor is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
“Costs, like everything else, are out of control, and coming from a family that had to make every dollar count, I know what that feels like,” Joel Brennan said in his launch video. (Screenshot from campaign video)
Joel Brennan, formerly the Department of Administration (DOA) secretary under Gov. Tony Evers, announced his campaign for governor Thursday, saying that President Donald Trump’s “chaos and incompetence” are hurting the state and that “the numbers just aren’t adding up for Wisconsin families.”
“Costs, like everything else, are out of control, and coming from a family that had to make every dollar count, I know what that feels like,” Brennan said in his launch video. “I’ll be a governor who will stand up to Trump’s dysfunction and be laser focused on improving the lives of people across our state.”
In the video, Brennan introduces himself, saying many voters “probably don’t know much about me.” He talks about growing up as one of 11 children in a family that was “long on potential, although sometimes a little short on resources.” He relates that he worked in many jobs including landscaping, retail and deep frying egg rolls to help put himself through college and that his first car had no working blinkers.
“I’ve raised two great kids with my wife, Audra, passing on lessons like rolling up our sleeves to get things done and showing up for our community, and for 25 years I’ve worked with businesses and non-profits to create jobs and strengthen Wisconsin’s economy.”
Brennan served as the DOA secretary from 2019 through 2021. The agency is responsible for assisting the governor with the state budget, providing centralized purchasing and financial management for state agencies and working with the 11 federally recognized Native Nations in Wisconsin on gaming and coastal programs.
“It’s easy to forget how broken things were after [former Gov.] Scott Walker and his right-wing Legislature had spent eight years gutting state government,” Brennan said. “We got to work putting the state on firmer financial footing, generating a budget surplus of nearly $4 billion dollars and growing our rainy day fund to $1.7 billion, then COVID hit and all of that progress was put at risk. We stood up to the extremists and delivered help to tens of thousands of small businesses, farmers, and families across Wisconsin.”
Prior to his time in Evers’ administration, Brennan worked as the executive director of Discovery World, the largest science museum in Wisconsin.
Brennan stepped down from leading the DOA in December 2021 to serve as the president of the Greater Milwaukee Committee (GMC). The private-sector, nonprofit civic organization works to foster economic development and cultural growth in Wisconsin’s largest metro area.
According to the Greater Milwaukee Committee, Brennan is stepping aside from the role as he runs for governor.
Brennan joins a crowded field of hopefuls seeking the Democratic nomination next year. Candidates include Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, state Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison), state Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison), Milwaukee County Exec. David Crowley, former Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation CEO Missy Hughes, former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes and former state Rep. Brett Hulsey. The primary is scheduled for Aug. 11, 2026.
Roys criticized Brennan in a statement after his announcement over a position the GMC took on a Milwaukee Public Schools referendum last year, saying that Wisconsin needs “a leader who knows how to deliver higher wages, lower costs and the freedom to thrive.”
“While I look forward to a spirited primary, I will not be able to overlook the fact that only one of the candidates in this race tried to defeat a desperately needed referendum to fund our biggest school district,” Roys said.
The GMC, under Brennan’s leadership, was one of the city’s business organizations that opposed the $252 million operational referendum successfully sought by Milwaukee Public Schools in 2024. GMC expressed concerns at the time over transparency and the “failure to clearly articulate a measurable plan for how these additional financial resources will improve student outcomes.”
The Republican field for governor is not as expansive with just two candidates: U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the frontrunner in the race, and Washington Co. Executive Josh Schoemann.
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Democrat Mandela Barnes, who served four years as Wisconsin’s lieutenant governor and narrowly lost a 2022 U.S. Senate bid, jumped into the battleground state’s open race for governor on Tuesday.
Given his prominent name recognition and statewide funding network, Barnes enters the 2026 race as the presumptive front-runner in a crowded primary of lesser known candidates who have no built-in network of support.
Wisconsin is a politically divided state that elected President Donald Trump in 2016 and 2024 and President Joe Biden in 2020. All three elections were decided by less than a percentage point.
The message in Barnes’ campaign launch video will likely appeal to many Democratic primary voters. He highlights his father’s union background and attacks Trump, saying the Republican has focused on “distraction and chaos to avoid accountability.” He says Trump is focusing on “lower taxes for billionaires, higher prices for working people.”
But with an eye toward independent and swing voters, who will be key in the general election, Barnes pitches a moderate stance focused on the economy.
“It isn’t about left or right, it isn’t about who can yell the loudest. It’s about whether people can afford to live in the state they call home,” Barnes says in the video.
Barnes has met with some opposition among Democrats who have publicly expressed worries about him running after he lost the Senate race to Republican incumbent Sen. Ron Johnson three years ago. If he wins next year, he would become Wisconsin’s first Black governor.
“Mandela had his opportunity. He didn’t close. And that means it’s time for a new chapter,” the Black-owned Milwaukee Courier newspaper wrote in an Oct. 25 editorial. “We need a candidate who can unite this state — and win. Mandela Barnes already showed us he can’t.”
Barnes lost to Johnson by 1 percentage point, which amounts to just under 27,000 votes. He does not mention the Senate race in his campaign launch video.
After the defeat, he formed a voter turnout group called Power to the Polls, which he says has strengthened his position heading into the governor’s race. He also has a political action committee.
Barnes joins a crowded field in the open race for governor that already includes the current lieutenant governor, two state lawmakers, the highest elected official in the Democratic stronghold of Milwaukee County and a former state economic development director.
Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, a staunch Trump supporter, is the highest-profile GOP candidate. He faces a challenge from Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann.
Tiffany called Barnes a “dangerous far-left extremist” and said voters “rejected him in 2022, and they will do it again in 2026.”
It will be Wisconsin’s highest-profile race next year, as Democrats angle to take control of the Legislature thanks to redrawn election maps that are friendlier to the party. They are targeting two congressional districts, as Democrats nationwide try to retake the House.
The governor’s race is open because current Democratic Gov. Tony Evers decided against seeking a second term. Barnes, a former state representative, won the primary for lieutenant governor in 2018 and served in that position during Evers’ first term.
The current lieutenant governor, Sara Rodriguez, was the first Democrat to get into the governor’s race this year. Others running include Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley; state Sen. Kelda Roys; state Rep. Francesca Hong; and former state economic development director Missy Hughes.
An August primary will narrow the field ahead of the November election.
The last open race for governor in Wisconsin was in 2010, when Democratic incumbent Jim Doyle, similar to Evers, opted not to seek a third term. Republican Scott Walker won that year and served two terms before Evers defeated him in 2018.
Evers won his first race by just over 1 percentage point in 2018. He won reelection by just over 3 points in 2022.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
Democrat Mandela Barnes enters the Wisconsin governor’s race 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.
Former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, a Milwaukee Democrat, announced Tuesday he’s running for governor in 2026.
Barnes served as lieutenant governor under Gov. Tony Evers from 2019 to 2023, the first African American to hold the position. He previously served in the state Assembly from 2013 to 2017.
Barnes’ entry into the race has long been anticipated, especially after a poll in early October showed him with the most support (16%) among a wide open field of Democratic contenders.
Wisconsin Watch has checked several claims related to Barnes during his unsuccessful 2022 campaign against Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson. Here’s what we found:
Defunding police: Barnes did not say that he supported defunding police, though in 2020 he backed reduced spending for Milwaukee police.
Gun rights: Barnes did say in a 2013 social media post he “could not care less about a 2nd Amendment ‘right.’ Bear arms all you wish, but you should pay for your mishandling.” In 2022, he said “we can respect the Second Amendment” while increasing “common-sense” gun control measures.
Immigration: Barnes did not say that he wanted to open U.S. borders. He backed a policy that “secures the border and also includes a path for citizenship.”
Abortion: Barnes did oppose the government legislating a limit on abortion, though a spokesperson at the time told Wisconsin Watch he didn’t support “abortion up until birth,” noting the standard before Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022 allowed limits on abortion after viability. He emphasized the abortion decision should be between a woman and her doctor.
Taxes: Barnes did not support raising taxes on the middle class, but rather backed middle-class tax cuts.
Criminal justice: As a state Assembly member in 2015, Barnes did vote against a law that expanded penalties for battery and threats against public officials.
Climate: Barnes did support the Green New Deal in 2021. During the 2022 campaign, he supported elements of the federal proposal to fight climate change while not referring to it by name.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes is running for governor. Here are 7 related claims we checked … and the facts 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.
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