Senate Democrats at a press conference on Nov. 12. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner)

With elections over, the Wisconsin State Legislature is beginning to organize itself for the coming term. Assembly Republicans reelected Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) Tuesday to serve another term in the position and Senate Democrats reelected Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton) as Senate minority leader. 

Vos is the longest serving Assembly speaker in Wisconsin history, having first been elected to the position in 2013. He was challenged Tuesday by Rep. Scott Allen (R-Waukesha) but held on to the top position. The caucus was closed to press, and the vote count wasn’t shared. 

Vos will continue in the position with a smaller caucus after Democrats won 10 additional seats this month. He said that Wisconsin’s split election results are a message that voters want lawmakers to “focus on what’s important to them.” 

“If you talk to most folks, they know the price of groceries. They know that rent is higher, and the cost of just about everything is higher,” Vos said. “We have a record surplus… we are not in a rush to spend that.” 

Democrats in the Assembly and Senate were able to compete more closely for seats because of new voting maps in Wisconsin that went into effect this year. The maps were passed by Republican lawmakers and signed into law by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in February after the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that the previous maps were an unconstitutional gerrymander. Republicans have held a majority in the state Legislature since 2011. 

Assembly Majority Leader Tyler August (R-Walworth), who was elected to another term in his leadership position, said Democrats had an “atrocious” election night after the new, more competitive voting maps were  “engineered to put themselves in the majority.”

When asked whether he would approach the job any differently with the slimmer margins, Vos said the caucus would still be seeking to get “consensus” from the majority of its members before bringing proposals to a vote, and that for some issues it could be harder to bring proposals forward. For example, he said a proposal on an issue such as legalizing medical marijuana could be more difficult.

“Reducing the size of government, not expanding welfare, making sure we invest in our priorities, returning the surplus back to taxpayers — I think the vast majority of things that we put on the table will be things that all 54 people in our caucus will unite behind,” Vos said. 

Lawmakers will spend considerable time in the coming months debating the next two-year state budget and how to use the state’s $4.6 budget surplus. Assembly Republicans said they want to cut taxes  as a way of returning the money to Wisconsinites and don’t want to grow the size of government. 

Vos said the budget surplus only exists because Evers vetoed Republicans’ tax cut proposals in the last budget, and that one proposal they will likely look at again is a tax cut for retirees. He also said the proposal put forth by Department of Public Instruction Superintendent Jill Underly to dedicate an additional $4 billion to public education in the state budget wasn’t “serious.” 

Other members of the Assembly Republican leadership include: 

• Rep. Scott Krug (R-Nekoosa) will serve as assistant majority leader.
• Rep. Kevin Peterson (R- Waupaca) will serve as speaker pro tempore.
• Rep. Rob Summerfield (R- Bloomer) will serve as caucus chair.
• Rep. Cindi Duchow (R-Town of Delafield) will serve as caucus vice-chair 
• Rep. Treig Pronschinske (R-Mondovi) will serve as caucus sergeant-at-arms. 
• Rep. Nancy VanderMeer (R-Tomah) will serve as caucus secretary.

Hesselbein leads Senate Democrats 

Hesselbein will lead Senate Democrats again in the upcoming term. She was first elected to the leadership position in December 2023 to replace Sen. Melissa Agard, who was just elected to serve as Dane County Executive.  

Senate Democrats are entering next year with four additional members to the caucus, including Jodi Habush Sinykin, Sarah Keyeski, Jamie Wall and Kris Alfheim. That increases the number of  Democratic-held seats to 15 and cuts the Republican majority to 18 seats.

Hesselbein said she was “absolutely devastated” that President-elect Donald Trump won a second term in office and carried Wisconsin, however, she said that her growing caucus is proof that Democrats worked hard  and won over voters. She added that Senate Democrats have a path to winning a majority in 2026 when the odd-numbered Senate seats will be up for election. 

“This is the state of Wisconsin. Just a few years ago, [on] the same night we elected Tony Evers and Ron Johnson,” Hesselbein said. “This is nothing new to the state, but going forward in two years, it’ll be a new dawn and a new day.” 

Until then, Hesselbein said that she is looking forward to more conversation and compromise with Republicans going forward. 

“Right now, we’re sitting on billions of dollars in our state coffers. A record number of schools this year went to referendum because we’re not funding schools adequately,” Hesselbein said. “We need to stop that trend and we need to fund K-12 schools in the state of Wisconsin. We need to be investing in public universities and our technical colleges, working to keep tuition affordable.” She also promoted  investing in young families, infrastructure, transportation systems and protecting the state’s natural resources. 

“We will fight tirelessly to get that job done,” Hesselbein said. 

Her “door is open” for Republican lawmakers, she said. 

Sen. Jeff Smith (D-Eau Claire) was elected to continue serving as assistant minority leader, Sen. Mark Spreitzer (D- Beloit) was elected to serve as caucus chair and Sen.-elect Dora Drake (D-Milwaukee) was elected to serve as caucus vice-chair. 

Last week Senate Republicans reelected Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, who has led the caucus since 2021. Assembly Democrats plan to meet next week to hold leadership elections.

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Wisconsin State Capitol (Wisconsin Examiner photo)

Control of the Wisconsin State Senate is unlikely to change this year even with new legislative maps in place, as only half of the seats are up for election. However, a handful of the Senate races will be key to determining how much the current 22-seat Republican supermajority changes and will set the stage for either Republicans or Democrats to win the majority in the 2026 election cycle.

Wisconsin’s state legislative races are the most competitive they’ve been in over a decade due to the new legislative maps that were adopted in February after the state Supreme Court ruled the old maps were an unconstitutional gerrymander. Democrats are running candidates in all 16 Senate seats up for election, while Republicans are running in 11 districts. Senators serve for four-year terms and make a salary of $57,000 per year. 

With just over two weeks until Election Day, the Wisconsin Examiner took a look at four state Senate races, which are among the most competitive, happening across the state.

Senate District 8

The race for Senate District 8 pits Republican Sen. Duey Stroebel against Democrat Jodi Habush Sinykin, an attorney and environmental advocate from Whitefish Bay. The district sits north of Milwaukee and includes Whitefish Bay, Fox Point, Bayside, River Hills, Menomonee Falls, Germantown, Mequon, Cedarburg, Grafton and Port Washington.

An analysis by John Johnson, a fellow at Marquette Law School, shows the seat has a 53% Republican lean when compared to 2022 election results. CN Analysis rates the race a toss-up. 

Stroebel was first elected to the state Senate in a 2015 special election after serving four years in the Assembly. In his last two elections, he faced no opposition in either the primary or the general election. 

If elected, it would be Habush Sinykin’s first time holding public office. She ran an unsuccessful but close campaign for the state Senate last year in a 2023 special election against Sen. Dan Knodl. With the new maps, Knodl decided to run for the Assembly this year to avoid running against Stroebel, who currently represents Senate District 20 under the old maps. 

It is already one of the most expensive legislative races in state history with close to $2 million in spending as of October. 

Democrats in the race have sought to highlight reproductive health — and Stroebel’s record on the issue. 

“Couples across Wisconsin are worried whether they will have the availability of IVF in the future. Doctors are worried about whether they could provide life-saving care to patients under Republican abortion bans… Students considering Health Care careers worry about the possibility of not being able to safely practice without threat of prosecution and women worry about whether or not they will be able to make decisions about their own bodies,” Habush Sinkykin said at a recent roundtable event. “I am running to help alleviate these worries and to  secure reproductive freedoms across the state.” 

Habush Sinykin has been critical of Stroebel’s past record on abortion and other reproductive health issues, pointing to his cosponsorship of a failed proposed amendment in 2019 that would have included fetal personhood in the state constitution. 

The amendment would give embryos the same rights as pregnant women, she said. “This is important because, as we heard and saw in Alabama, this would deprive women and families of opportunities for IVF here in Wisconsin,” Habush Sinykin said. 

Stroebel was also the only senator to vote against a bill that would have expanded postpartum Medicaid coverage. He, along with other Republicans senators, also rejected Democrats’ attempts to bring a bill to the floor that would have implemented protections for contraception and fertility treatments. 

Stroebel’s campaign recently sent a cease and desist order to Habush Sinykin’s campaign because of an ad, which accused the lawmakers of voting to end IVF.

“I have never voted to restrict access to IVF, and I never will. Any assertion otherwise is a lie,” Stroebel said in a statement. 

Habush Sinykin’s campaign has stood by the statement. 

Stroebel, meanwhile, is seeking to place his work in the Senate at the centerpiece of his campaign. He has served on the powerful Joint Finance Committee since 2019, and has recently helped advocate for the passage of a massive expansion of Wisconsin’s school choice program, a new literacy law that changes how reading is taught in the state and repealing the personal property tax, which was included in Act 12.

Stroebel said during an interview on the Political Power Hour on 620 WTMJ that inflation is the issue that he is discussing the most with voters at their doors. He said that he has knocked over 25,000 doors this election year.

“The cost of living is really crushing people. I mean, we’re talking about people on fixed incomes, we’re talking about retired people, we’re talking about young families,” Stroebel said. “We, as government, can do a lot more to help that situation out.” 

Stroebel said that the state’s budget surplus should be given back to taxpayers. The most recent report from the Department of Administration found that the state ended its 2024 fiscal year with a $4.6 billion state budget surplus — outpacing previous projections. He noted that the Legislature sent Gov. Tony Evers several tax cut proposals — many of which were vetoed. 

Stroebel said he supports a “middle class tax cut” — meaning one that wouldn’t touch the state’s highest tax bracket and would also focus on taxes on retirement income.

Habush Sinykin said in an interview with WisEye that the state’s budget surplus needs to be used to invest in Wisconsin’s K-12 schools, including increases to per-pupil and special education funding, and the university system as well as workforce development. She has said that tax cuts should be targeted towards working families and retirees.

Senate District 14

Republican incumbent Joan Ballweg and Democrat Sarah Keyeski, a mental health provider, are running against each other in the race for Senate District 14. The district sits north of Madison and covers parts of Dane, Columbia, Sauk and Richland counties, including the cities of Deforest, Reedsburg, Baraboo, Lodi, Columbus, Portage, Richland Center and Wisconsin Dells.

An analysis by Marquette Law School showed that the seat is a 53.3% Democratic lean. CN Analysis rates the district as ‘Tilt .’

Ballweg has served in the Assembly from 2004 to 2018 and was elected to the Senate in 2020. During her time in the Legislature, she has served in leadership positions, including currently as majority caucus vice-chair and is also a member of the Joint Finance Committee. She also previously served as the mayor of Markesan. 

Under the new maps, Markesan was drawn into the new 13th Senate District, which is represented by Sen. John Jagler (R-Watertown). Ballweg has said she now lives in Pardeeville. 

Keyeski is a mental health provider from Lodi, and a political newcomer.

Reproductive health care is again one of the issues at the center of the race. At a candidate forum hosted by Lodi Optimists Club last week, both candidates were asked whether they would vote to “protect women’s reproductive health” by putting legal abortion into law.

Keyeski, who supports codifying Roe v. Wade protections into law, said people have the right to make choices over their own bodies. Ballweg, meanwhile, sought to focus on other parts of reproductive health care, rather than abortion.

“Before you get to the abortion, first of all, I totally agree that women should be participating or using whatever type of contraception processes that they are comfortable with… in consultation with their doctors, of course,” Ballweg said. 

Many Republican candidates at the state and  federal levels have stepped back from restrictive abortion positions this election cycle. A recent poll found that most Wisconsinites oppose criminalizing abortion. 

Ballweg has previously talked about her opposition to abortion.

According to the Ripon Commonwealth Press, Ballweg explained that she was anti-abortion at a listening session in 2022 and she didn’t think that the 1849 law, which stopped abortion care in Wisconsin for over a year, should be changed to include exceptions for rape and incest. 

“I believe that life begins at conception. … Even if it is started in a very terrible way, that’s still life,” Ballweg said. “… If a woman is raped and it results in a pregnancy, that person who raped her was terrible, but she wasn’t.”

“I believe there are options. … She has the choice to love that child and keep that child with her, or she can leave that baby at the hospital, walk out the door and that baby will be taken care of.”

In an interview with WisEye, Ballweg said the issue isn’t currently the responsibility of the Legislature. The Wisconsin Supreme Court has accepted two cases filed by Attorney General Josh Kaul and Planned Parenthood that will determine if Wisconsinites have a right to abortion care. 

“I expect that we’ll be getting an answer from them in the not too distant future, so it’s out of the Legislature’s hands at this point,” Ballweg said. When asked again about whether she has a position on whether abortion should be limited after a certain number of weeks, Ballweg noted that she supported a 20-week limit a couple of years ago.

Ballweg has said one of her top priorities if reelected would be to help pass a bill to extend postpartum Medicaid coverage to a year. Wisconsin is one of two states that hasn’t accepted it. She was the lead Senate author on a bill that would have done this last year, but it never received a vote in the Assembly. 

“It’s important that we have mom there for our youngest Wisconsinites, so that mom and baby can be healthy together,” Ballweg said in an interview with WisconsinEye. 

Keyeski, meanwhile, has said she supports full Medicaid expansion. Wisconsin is one of 10 states that haven’t accepted the federal Medicaid expansion. Medicaid eligibility, under the expansion, would be extended to adults under age 65 with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty level.

“Approximately 90,000 people, if we expanded Medicaid, would have better access to care and that’s really important. One of the things that’s also really important about expanding this is that our rural communities really depend on our small clinics, our small hospitals, really depend on Medicaid money,” Keyeski said at the forum. “Many of our rural communities have people that are on Medicaid and so that is what keeps those smaller hospitals and clinics viable. We’ve seen some having to close down now in the Eau Claire area Chippewa Falls area, and that is a travesty and that could have been somewhat helped by having this Medicaid expansion.”

Education funding has also represented a key issue in the race. The focus comes as more than 100 school districts across the state will go to voters to ask for additional funding in November.

Keyeski has said that she wants additional state funding to go towards public schools across Wisconsin, including by increasing special education funding. 

“We need to change the school funding formula, so that we have more money coming toward our schools,” Keyeski said at the forum, noting that the state has a significant budget surplus.

Keyeski has also said she doesn’t believe that private schools should receive public funding.

Ballweg also said she supports increasing special education funding. 

“We’re at about 33% of coverage right now. School districts can have a problem if they have one or two really difficult cases, and we do some things for those high cost special needs students also, but in general, the No. 1 stressor on our school districts is filling the need for special needs kids, so yes, keep making sure that we increase that,” Ballweg said during the WisEye interview. 

Senate District 30

Republican Jim Rafter and Democrat Jamie Wall are running against each other in the race for the newly created 30th Senate District, which covers Green Bay, Ashwaubenon, De Pere, Allouez, Bellevue. 

The district has a 52.6% Democratic lean, according to the Marquette Law School analysis. CN Analysis rates the race as “Lean D.”

Wall is a business consultant from Green Bay. He helped create New North, an economic development organization that seeks to promote business growth in Brown County and northeast Wisconsin. He ran for public office once before in 2012 for Wisconsin’s 8th Congressional District seat, losing to former U.S. Rep. Reid Ribble 55% to 44%. 

Wall said Wisconsin’s new maps are a major reason he felt he could step into the race this year. The new maps placed three lawmakers in the 30th Senate District together. Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Green Bay), who is the current incumbent, decided to move to another district because of the new maps under, while the other lawmakers are leaving the Senate.

“I wouldn’t have bothered under the old system, since that would have been a fool’s errand,” Wall said in an interview. “The Green Bay Metro here was kind of the poster child for the old gerrymander.”

Wall said he hasn’t been happy with the direction of the Legislature for the last 15 years. 

“They made it so it was illegal for them not to be in power and they got to be their bad selves. They didn’t have to think about the voter in the middle… They could just go straight down the far right side of the highway and only worry about their primary voters… I don’t think it was good for the state,” Wall said. 

Wall said the costs of housing, health care and child care are three of the issues that he would want to work to help address. 

“We need to take a hard look at barriers to building more houses and not just houses, but apartments, condos, duplexes, to increase the housing supply,” Wall said. He said more could also be done with programs that the Wisconsin Economic Development Association (WEDA) has to help first-time home buyers afford down payments and their first mortgage. 

When it comes to health care, Wall said he supports Medicaid expansion and would also want to have conversations about ways of streamlining and making care more efficient, though he said that doesn’t mean depriving people of care.

Rafter said in a WisEye interview that he is running for the Senate so that he can help bring people together to work towards finding solutions to issues facing Wisconsinites. He said that his experience as village president would help him do this. 

His campaign did not respond to an interview request from the Examiner. 

Rafter said his top priority in the Legislature would be to work on bills that would help with the cost of living including  the cost of housing, food, clothing, child care. One potential bill to do this would be a tax cut bill. He said that most, if not all, of the budget surplus needs to go back to taxpayers.

“The state of Wisconsin has overcharged or overtaxed its citizens,” Rafter said. “We’ve got to figure out how not to do that.” 

Wall has said that when it comes to the budget surplus he would also support some tax relief. 

“The state’s running record surpluses and we should give some of that money back to the people who need it to help them at a time where many people rightly feel a little bit pinched,” Wall said. He said he liked  Evers’ middle class tax cut proposal for the 2023 budget, which was rejected by Republican lawmakers.

Rafter said that there need to be conversations about increasing funding to schools, and he noted that Green Bay is one of the schools going to referendum. 

Senate District 18

Democrat Kris Alfheim and Republican Anthony Phillips are running against each other in the race for the 18th Senate District in the Fox Valley, including Appleton, Menasha, Neenah and Oshkosh. 

The open district has a 55.5% Democratic lean, according to the Marquette Law School analysis. The current 18th Senate District incumbent Sen. Dan Feyen (R-Fond du Lac) was drawn into the 20th Senate District under the new maps. 

Alfheim has served on the Appleton Common Council since 2020. She previously ran a campaign for the state Senate in 2022, losing to Sen. Rachael Cabral Guevara (R-Appleton) 54% to 45.9%.  

Alfheim has said that she is running for the Senate on the “simple idea” that “people in Wisconsin like me are tired of the bickering, of the gridlock, of the dysfunction and are ready to actually get things done.”

Alfheim has said that, if elected, she will be a “pragmatic” legislator . One of her goals  is  using the state’s budget surplus to invest in schools and municipalities. 

The best way the state can help lower taxes is to invest in local needs, Alfheim said during an interview with WisEye. “When you hold back revenue from the state, to our school systems, to our municipalities, that forces the school systems and the municipalities to then raise taxes. The best way to control those rising costs are to actually fund the systems that we account for on a regular basis.”

Phillips, a cancer physician in the Fox Valley, is a political newcomer. He has said that he wants to help keep the district in Republican hands and has described himself as a “right-center” candidate. His priorities for office include keeping law enforcement funded, income and property taxes low, bolstering parental oversight of education and ensuring families have access to health care.

Phillips has made transgender issues a focal point of his campaign. In his campaign announcement, he highlighted Evers’ veto of a bill that would have barred transgender girls from participating on girls athletic teams. The issue also came up in a primary debate where Phillips talked about Alfheim. 

[Alfheim has] “got to normalize this crazy notion of biological males playing girls’ sports,” Phillips said during the debate. 

Alfheim is a member of the LGTBQ+ community, and a spotlight candidate for the LGTBQ+ Victory Fund, which is a political action committee dedicated to growing the number of out LGBTQ+ public officials in the U.S.

Democrats have also highlighted abortion and reproductive health issues in the race. Alfheim has said that she wants to work towards restoring women’s access to reproductive health care. Phillips, meanwhile, lists “advocating for a culture of Life to protect the lives of the unborn” as one of the issues that matter to him, and has previously said he would support a referendum on abortion restrictions, and believes people would favor some level of restriction on abortion access.

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Lawrence University student Megan Eisenstein (left) speaking at a reproductive rights roundtable in Appleton last week as Emily Tseffos (right), a Democratic Assembly candidate and chair of the Outagamie County Democratic party chair, listens. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner)

FOX VALLEY — Democrat Emily Tseffos was stood up by her incumbent opponent Rep. Dave Murphy (R-Greenville), who is seeking his sixth term in the state Assembly, twice before she launched her campaign for Wisconsin’s 56th Assembly District.

The first time, Tesffos, a mother of three, said she got a babysitter and sat waiting at a restaurant in the district but he never showed up. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, she said she scheduled a second meeting. Then, it happened again.

“I was like, we pay your salary, sir, and you are supposed to be listening to people, even if it’s not aligned with what you believe to be true,” Tseffos, who also serves as chair of the Outagamie County Democratic Party, said. She said she later spoke with Murphy after visiting his office in the Wisconsin State Capitol (She was already there for a meeting about Child Care Counts). “I threw my hat in the ring shortly after that. We deserve better and I’m trying to run a campaign that reminds people that we deserve better.”

Outagamie County alongside Brown and Winnebago Counties make up Wisconsin’s ‘BOW’ counties — a growing population center in the Fox Valley that includes the cities of Green Bay and Appleton.

The battleground region could play a role in determining control of Wisconsin’s state Legislature as several newly competitive seats are up for grabs under recently adopted maps. Fox Valley voters could also determine the results of competitive federal races, including the presidential election. (The counties were identified by Politico as helping President Joe Biden win in 2020.) 

The region has been trending less red in recent elections, and Democrats are hoping to accelerate that trend this election year up and down the ballot.

Outagamie County

“This is a super purple county, so the fact that we’re in the battleground state of the moment but then in a county that, for the first time in 15 years, went blue for [Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Janet] Protasiewicz — like, that’s huge to us,” Tseffos said. “So we recognize the responsibility of making sure we’re getting every single progressive and Democrat and independent that aligns with the Democratic ideals to turn out in November.”

Former President Donald Trump won Outagamie County in 2020 with 53.8% of the vote. Biden had 43.9%, representing an improvement for the Democratic candidate when compared to 2016. During the 2022 midterms, unsuccessful Republican candidate Tim Michels carried the county with almost 53% of the vote, while Democratic Gov. Tony Evers received almost 46%.

The following spring the county swung in favor of liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz, whose campaign focused heavily on restoring abortion rights, with 51.5% voting for her over conservative former Justice Dan Kelly.

The 56th Assembly District, which includes part of Outagamie County and Waupaca County, is not one of Democrats’ top target seats to flip, and CN Analysis rates the district as “Solid R”. Still, Tseffos has been knocking doors there every day. 

On Friday last week, Tseffos drove 30 minutes outside of Appleton to Lebanon, Wis., a small town in Waupaca County, to knock on people’s doors in a rural part of the district. 

“Just talking politics with strangers,” Tseffos would say when someone had a look of confusion by her presence. Sometimes she would joke about how that’s what everyone wants to do on a Friday. It was her way of easing into conversations with people at their front doors, in their yards and as they walked their dogs.

After breaking the ice, Tseffos asked people about the issues that matter the most to them and tried to find common ground. She listened to their concerns, then made her case for why they should vote for her — and other Democrats — next month. 

Tim, an older white man who was in his garage when Tseffos walked up his driveway, said divided politics was a big concern for him, and that he was planning to vote a straight Democratic ticket. 

“I’m tired of the Republicans,” he told Tseffos. By the end of the conversation, he agreed to let Tseffos put one of her yard signs in his front yard, but declined a Harris-Walz sign. He said his neighbor is a Republican and he wanted to keep things civil.

Tseffos heard about concerns about the state of roads from multiple people, and she told them she could be the “squeaky wheel” that would help get those projects done. A Trump voter spoke to her about his concerns about immigration, and how he thought the border was more secure during Trump’s presidency. She tried to steer the conversation towards state-level issues, including education, to see if she could get him to split his ticket. 

A couple of people said they didn’t have any concerns or weren’t planning on voting in which case Tseffos gave them her spiel and tried to convince them that they should vote. She told these voters about her support for increasing public education funding, including special education funding, improving birth control affordability and accessibility and that she generally wants to work on bringing people together.

At the last door, Tseffos spoke to an older couple, Dale and Janice, who said they were Christians and don’t believe in abortion except for in extreme cases.

“We don’t like abortion,” Janice said at one point in the conversation. “There have been millions of babies tossed aside.”

Tseffos told the couple that she was a “fellow Christian,” who wouldn’t entertain abortion for herself, and as a mother, she knows “how precious life is.” However, as a victim of sexual violence, she said she also knows how terrible the world can be. She emphasized that bans could have an outsized impact on women late in pregnancy, who “desperately” want to have a baby, but are dealing with severe complications.

“That’s the problem with bans for me,” Tseffos said to the couple, adding that heartbeat bills are also problematic for her. 

In the rest of the conversation, they touched on the cost of child care, school and the need for the inclusion of rural voices in government. Tseffos said, reflecting on the conversation, that she felt like she made progress because she was able to explain her thinking to them.

Winnebago County 

Vice President Kamala Harris came to Ripon, Wisconsin, which sits just south of Winnebago County, last week to hold a rally with Liz Cheney, who made a pitch to Republican voters who don’t like Trump that they should support Harris. Chair of the Winnebago County Democratic Party Marcia Steele told the Examiner during the rally that enthusiasm for Harris has been unbelievable. Steele has served as party chair on and off for about 20 years. 

“If it comes down to Wisconsin, more than likely would come down to Winnebago County, Brown County and Outagamie County… so we are very fortunate that we’re starting to get more enthusiasm in our area,” Steele said.

Steele said that the enthusiasm is helping, especially as Democrats seek to flip seats by running candidates in newly created districts in the state legislative races. A lot of volunteers are showing up to knock doors and make phone calls, she said. 

“We’ve had… people that have never done it before. It’s just unbelievable — unbelievable. And the older people that have been doing it for a long time, recognize it and just keep saying, yes, sign me up for another shift,” Steele said. “In the Fox Valley, we’ve got the new 18th Senate District, which we can make it blue, which would be great, and then we’ve got the new 53rd [Assembly District], which we could make that blue, so it’ll be huge for the Legislature going in to have more people than it just all being a gerrymandered state.”

The 18th Senate District is made up of Appleton in Outagamie County and Menasha, Neenah and Oshkosh in Winnebago County. Kris Alfheim, a member of the Appleton Common Council, is running for the 18th Senate District against Republican Anthony Phillips, a cancer physician who wants to keep the district red. 

The 53rd Assembly District encompasses Neenah, Menasha and part of Appleton. Democrat Duane Shukoski, a Neenah retiree, faces Republican Dean Kaufert, the former Neenah mayor and a former Assembly member.

The two races are some of Democrats’ top targets as they battle to gain more seats in the state Legislature. Republicans currently hold a 64-seat majority in the 99-seat Assembly and a 22-seat supermajority in the 33-seat Senate. 

“If we can flip the Assembly or at least be close this year,… and get us closer to the Senate [majority] in 2026, we can be the forward Wisconsin it was when I moved here in ‘89,” Steele, who is originally from Michigan, said. 

Reproductive rights

Reproductive health issues are one of the issues that Democrats in the area are hoping will bring voters out to the polls. Tseffos was surprised to see the large margin that Protasiewicz won by in Outagamie County in April 2023. 

“Fair maps and reproductive health… that’s what they kept beating down,” Tseffos said. “It made us realize locally — continue to talk about reproductive health and what that means to people and what the realities are for folks.” 

After her daily door knocking last week, Tseffos joined Alfheim and Shukoski at a roundtable event in Appleton to talk about reproductive health issues.

Lawrence University student Megan Eisenstein, who attended the event, explained that when Roe v. Wade was overturned, it changed the way she felt about going to school in Wisconsin. She’s from Illinois.

“I felt pretty safe there to make any choices that I needed to reproductive health-wise, but I knew that I was going to a state where I wasn’t able to make those choices after Roe v. Wade was overturned, and so I started to really dread going to college as a whole,” Eisenstein said. 

Eisenstein, who is social chair for her campus’s college Democrats group and also interns with the state party, told the Examiner that she became politically active in 2022 after starting school. 

“I didn’t really see politics as being something where you could actually make a difference,” Eisenstein said. “Coming here to Wisconsin, where every single voice matters, every door you knock matters, it really inspired me to get a little more involved.” 

This will be her first time voting in a presidential election, and she has also been helping knock doors for Alfheim and other candidates. She said the issue is a good “rallying cry” for people.

“It serves as the foundation for a lot of liberal values, and so it becomes about more than just reproductive freedom, and it also becomes about freedom for other things, and also for caring for people who might not be like you,” Eisenstein said. 

Democratic candidates in the district emphasized their support for access to abortion, birth control, infertility treatments and control of their health decisions. 

“Democrats get it — people don’t want politicians in Madison or anywhere else making their personal health decisions for them,” Alfheim said. She said she would work towards restoring women’s access to reproductive health care if elected.

During the roundtable in Appleton, Alfheim sought to differentiate her position from her opponent Phillips. She commented on  Trump’s running mate JD Vance, that some Republican candidates’ public and private comments on reproductive health differ, and she sees this with her opponent, whom she described as “anti-choice.”

The Phillips campaign declined an interview request from the Wisconsin Examiner. On his campaign website, Phillips lists “Advocating for a culture of Life to protect the lives of the unborn” as one of the issues that matter to him. He previously told the Examiner that he would support a referendum on the issue, and believes people would favor some level of restrictions.

“You don’t get to take away what you say in private amongst your peers and then make me think it’s OK out here,” Alfheim said. “That’s an Integrity issue. We should be whoever we are. Own how you feel and be strong enough to say it out loud every time… We have seen it with everyone. They are clearly stating they are against it and then they are slowly backing away.” 

Brown County

Brown County — home to the Green Bay Packers — is the last of the three competitive counties in the region where Democrats are aiming to improve their margins.

In 2016, Trump won the county with 52% of the vote, while Hillary Clinton only garnered 41%. Trump won the county, again, in 2020 with 52.7% of the vote. Biden got 45.5%, representing an improvement for Democrats compared to 2016.

During the 2022 midterms, unsuccessful Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels carried the county with 51% of the vote, while Democratic Gov. Tony Evers received 47%. The following spring the county swung in favor of liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz, whose campaign focused heavily on abortion, with 51.5% voting for her over conservative former Justice Kelly. 

“We joke a lot in the office, ‘Welcome to the political epicenter of the country,’” Christy Welch, who chairs the county Democratic Party and is running for the state Assembly, said. “It is pretty wild… [it’s] the largest swing county in this critical state and this battle between the potential end of democracy or just being able to keep building on everything Biden-Harris got going.” 

The region has had several visits from the Harris-Walz campaign. Vice presidential candidate Tim Walz plans to campaign in Green Bay next week, according to a media advisory issued Thursday. Other surrogates including U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and First Lady Jill Biden have also campaigned in the area.

Welch said population growth contributes to the changing political cast of the city but that there are also a lot of people who are opposed to the direction the Republican party has taken.

“I’m knocking a lot of doors and I have run into so many people that tell me that they used to vote Republican but they just don’t want anything to do with the Republican party, the way it’s operating today, and so they’re voting for Democrats,” Welch said. “The divisiveness and not focusing on actual policies and solutions, just always looking backward and blaming. They don’t want to have anything to do with that.” 

Welch is also running in a competitive race against Republican Benjamin Franklin, a De Pere business owner, for the 88th Assembly District, which includes Bellevue, Allouez and De Pere. 

In the Legislature, Welch said she has been speaking with voters about the cost of groceries, housing, health care and child care. Her priorities for the Legislature overlap with these issues. She said she wants to increase public education funding and continue funding for the state’s Child Care Counts program. She said she also wants Wisconsin to take the federal Medicaid expansion and to repeal the state’s 1849 law, which caused all abortions to cease in the state for more than a year after Roe v. Wade was overturned. 

Through door knocking, Welch said that she has been able to let some voters know about the new legislative maps.

“Not everyone pays as close attention and some people just didn’t realize… It is nice to let people know, who consider themselves Democrats and are not totally in the loop on the maps, what that means. We’re definitely going to pick up more seats. Hopefully, we’re going to get the majority. That gives them some hope too,” Welch said.

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