Devin Remiker, the newly elected chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, says he “absolutely” wants Gov. Tony Evers to seek a third term.

“I pray that he decides to seek reelection,” Remiker said on WISN 12’s “UpFront,” which is produced in partnership with WisPolitics. “But either way, I know the Democratic Party of Wisconsin will be in a great position to ensure he’s either reelected or reelect a Democrat in 2026.

“I’m on pins and needles,” Remiker added, saying he has no insight into Evers’ eventual decision. “Governor Evers has been a fantastic partner to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. He’s even put on pause his own election efforts to help fundraise for some of our state legislative work on cycles when he hasn’t been on the ballot. And he’s a tremendous fundraiser, and I think that when you look at what happens in this scenario where he doesn’t run for reelection, there’s certainly going to be plenty of other folks that are out there trying to raise money.”

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Democrats nationally praised the state party for its fundraising juggernaut under the leadership of former party Chair Ben Wikler.

“I’ve worked closely with Ben through the past six years, and with Chair Laning before him as well, which is where a lot of our major donor giving actually started, and people kind of undercount that,” Remiker said. “Chair Wikler helped pour gasoline on the whole thing, and I think that, somewhat having worked with him so closely and been part of building that, these donors, large and grassroots, they largely are investing in an operation that they trust. They trust us to make the change that they believe in.”

Remiker said one of the party’s main targets headed into the midterms is winning back middle-class voters who have left the Democratic Party.

“I think that we may not have made any sort of conscious decision or effort, but I think that over time we have lost trust with working-class voters,” Remiker said. “My goal as state party chair isn’t to win coin flips for the fate of democracy in a battleground state perpetually. I want to be a blue state, and to do that, we’re going to need to win some people back that we have lost.”

At the same time, he said, he understands the sentiment from some Democrats that the party has not pushed back hard enough against the Trump administration.

“I definitely think we need to be fighting back,” Remiker said. “Right now, I think a lot of people’s perception of the Democratic Party, even among our own members, is that we are not front and center in the fight right now, that in the early days of the Trump administration national Democrats didn’t rise to the occasion and were able to fight back against the Trump administration.”

“I think that making sure that we are present, we are speaking out loudly and clearly, is incredibly important,” he added. “I also think that is part of what made Trump successful, that people who were mad as heck about what they saw as their community changing, their way of life changing, their economic situation changing, they saw someone who was mad and willing to fight back. And I think that voters want to know that somebody is on their side, and not just on their side when it’s convenient, but willing to throw a punch for them, too.”

Ann Jacobs, chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, says revelations from the investigation into how nearly 200 absentee ballots went uncounted in Madison in November are “absolutely shocking.”

“I think the word we used in our report was ‘astonishing,'” Jacobs told “UpFront.” “The Madison city clerk was informed in November that there may be ballots that had gone uncounted. She didn’t investigate and testified in deposition that she never even asked about it again until sometime in mid-December. It was absolutely shocking.”

Jacobs, a Democrat, and Don Millis, a Republican commissioner, led the investigation, which included thousands of pages of documents and more than a dozen depositions.

“It’s so easy that it’s almost absurd,” Jacobs said when asked what former clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl should have done. “First of all, she should have opened the bag to see if there were ballots inside. The minute she saw there were ballots inside, she needed to notify the county clerk because the county clerk was doing the county canvass, and she needed to notify her municipal board of canvassers, and they needed to take steps to count those ballots and ensure they were included. Then, after making sure that first set of ballots was included, she needed to take steps to make sure that the same mistake hadn’t occurred elsewhere, which we now know did.”

The full commission will vote on whether to accept the investigation’s findings Thursday. Jacobs and Millis concluded Witzel-Behl acted unlawfully, which the commission will vote to affirm, but any criminal charges would be up to local prosecutors.

“I’m not a big fan of that, but obviously it’s up to their discretion to do that,” Jacobs said. “I’m hesitant to start criminalizing the work of our clerks. A lot of things went wrong here, but I’m not sure that criminal charges is the way to prevent this in the future. I really do think that it’s a learn experience for our clerks across the state.”

U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil says it was “a bit of a strange analysis” when asked about the recent comments by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins that Medicaid recipients could replace farmworkers who are in the country illegally.

“I think there’s a significant number of jobs that are available,” Steil told “UpFront.” “The work requirement simply says you need to be even looking for work, volunteering 20 hours a week or working 20 hours a week or 80 hours a month. As you drive around communities here in Southeast Wisconsin, I think we see plenty of ‘Help Wanted’ signs. Again, it’s about getting people back into the workforce and then into good and better-paying jobs.”

Beyond that, Steil said he would not support any type of amnesty program for farmworkers.

“I think one, we need to secure the border,” he said. “I think President Trump has done a terrific job of that. I think this bill makes an additional investment to make sure we’re permanently securing the U.S.-Mexico border as we fix the broken illegal immigration system. I think that gives us an opportunity to fix the broken legal immigration system. … I do not believe there should be amnesty, but I think we have a true opportunity to fix the broken illegal immigration system now that we’re beginning to make real headway in the broken illegal immigration problem.”

Gov. Tony Evers raced to sign the state budget in an overnight ceremony, before President Trump signed his federal reconciliation bill, to ensure the state could raise its hospital assessment to secure more federal Medicaid funds.

“What it really shows you is that the Medicaid system nationwide has major and significant flaws, and it is the flaws that we were trying to address at the federal level,” Steil said. “What we’re trying to do is actually strengthen the program for those that it was designed for. What we’ve seen across the country is a lot of gamesmanship inside the Medicaid system. Other states have been really egregious abusers of it. I’ll let the state Legislature and the governor determine how they’re going to operate under the rules of the road that are in front of them. But big picture, I think what it shows the American people is how the Medicaid system has been abused across the country.”

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