MADISON, Wis. — Recent reporting from the New York Times and Wisconsin Examiner details Democrats’ fight to take control of the state legislature, while Republicans rely on their billionaire donors and attempt to distance themselves from their party’s failed economic agenda that has caused prices to soar across the state. The reporting also describes how Democrats are harnessing momentum to achieve a historic Democratic trifecta—a possibility that, as a result of years of Republican gerrymandering, hasn’t been on the table for over a decade.

“Only a few weeks before the midterms and with their jobs on the line, Wisconsin Republicans are finally reckoning with the consequences of their crushing and cost-raising records,” said Democratic Party of Wisconsin spokesperson Rachel La Due. “Between voters’ rejection of Republican policies and our strong Democratic candidates up and down the ballot fighting for real change, Democrats are primed to put an end to 16 years of Republicans’ stranglehold of power in Madison—and no amount of billionaire money can cover up for the ways in which Republicans have failed Wisconsin families.” 

Wisconsin Examiner: Assembly GOP Candidates in Competitive Seats Try to Distance Themselves From Their Party
By: Baylor Spears | 9/29/2026

  • Republicans’ control of the Wisconsin Assembly is up in the air this November, and GOP candidates in competitive districts are taking steps to convince voters to allow them to extend their 16-year streak of leadership, including by distancing themselves from Republican leaders in Washington, D.C. and in Wisconsin.
  • Barry Burden, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Elections Research Center, told the Wisconsin Examiner in an email that the 2026 election environment is “more advantageous to Democrats than the 2024 environment was.”
  • Part of that environment can be seen in the approval ratings of President Donald Trump. A Marquette Law School poll released in September found that Trump’s approval has declined to 37% — down from 40% approval in July; 63% of respondents said they disapproved of the job Trump is doing. 
  • A recent Marquette poll found that 46% of Wisconsin voters said they would vote for Democrats in legislative races, while 42% said they’d vote for Republicans. The survey did not deliver detailed information on specific districts. 
  • “The party is all but certain to make additional gains,” Burden said of Wisconsin Democrats. “The question is whether the wave will be sufficient to put them over the top.”
  • Republicans hold a 54-seat majority in the 99-seat state Assembly. Democratic lawmakers need to hold all of their current seats in the Assembly and pick up five additional seats to flip the body, a steeper task than in the Senate where Democrats are looking to pick up at least two seats to take control.
  • Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) and Rep. August Tyler (R-Walworth), who is heading up the Republican Assembly Campaign Committee, did not respond to requests for an interview from the Examiner. In an interview with the New York Times, Vos described Trump as a “drag” on the party and said Republicans have worked to recruit center-right candidates to run in competitive districts.
  • “There’s nobody in Wisconsin that I think is yearning for a hard turn left or right,” Vos told the New York Times.Instead of embracing their party’s leadership in Wisconsin, Republican candidates are also highlighting the moments where they have disagreed with their leadership to position themselves as independent voices.
  • Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer (D-Racine) told the Examiner in an interview that Republican candidates’ strategy to try to distance themselves from the rest of their party won’t work. She said that Democrats’ path to the majority is helped by Trump’s unpopularity. 
  • “Trump is deeply unpopular across our battleground districts, and that’s more than the five that we need to flip in order to gain a majority,” Neubauer said. “We have a real opportunity here to put forward a new vision. We know that it is not easy to beat long-term incumbents, but we feel that we have the winning formula this year.”
  • Neubauer said Wisconsinites are “smart enough to see through these half-hearted attempts by Republicans to distance themselves from their own party.” She noted that Snyder, who has been in office for nearly a decade, has often voted in line with his party.
  • “He, of course, has not actually fought back against the Trump administration and Republicans in Washington who are doing nothing to address the cost increases that voters are experiencing,” she said. “Pat Snyder is an establishment Republican, and I think his voters understand that, and this strategy will not work.”
  • “Republicans understand that people are unhappy with their party, and they are not excited about showing up to vote Republican this fall,” Neubauer said. “Pat Snyder can try to tell his voters that he’s not a Republican, but at the end of the day, there’s going to be an R next to his name, and he went right along with his party in giving a tax break to data centers, in refusing to adequately fund our schools and thereby increase their property taxes,” Neubauer said. “Pat Snyder and his colleagues across the Republican battlegrounds have been with Robin Vos every step of the way, and I do think that their strategy is not going to work.”  
  •  The Republican Assembly Campaign Committee has raised $10.6 million this year to fuel the party’s efforts to keep control. The majority of the funds were donated by Diane Hendricks and Elizabeth Uihlein, billionaires who have contributed millions to help get Republicans elected up and down the ballot in Wisconsin. Hendricks and the Uihleins have also donated millions to the Republican Party of Wisconsin, which has, in turn, channeled millions to Republican gubernatorial candidate Tiffany. 
  • The Assembly Democratic Campaign Committee has reported raising more than $3.3 million this year.
  • Neubauer said Assembly Democrats’ formula for winning is a combination of candidates who understand the challenges of their local communities having direct conversations with voters and a “robust” paid media program.
  • Neubauer said that Democrats just have a “different” fundraising model. She said she expects there to be spending similar to the last election cycle when $1 million or more was spent in the most competitive seats and that money for Democrats tends to come later in the cycle. 
  • “Assembly Republicans have raised a lot of money from three billionaires whose financial interests are directly tied to whether Republicans control the state Assembly,” Neubauer said, adding that the ADCC has more than 2,500 donors from across every county in the state. “Our candidates and our members are on the phone every single day, calling donors to bring in the dollars that we need to get our message out. And often those dollars come in in more like $50 or $100 checks than several-million-dollar checks, so we are going to continue to work hard to make sure that we have the resources that we need to compete… I am confident that we will be able to bring in the resources that we need to communicate this year.”
  • Burden noted that individual Democratic candidates have in some cases outraised their opponents. He named Assembly District 88 where Brandy Tollefson, the Democratic candidate and a De Pere school board member, reported raising more than $80,000 over the year compared with her opponent,  incumbent Rep. Benjamin Franklin (R-De Pere), who reported raising more than $27,000.
  • “Although the Republican Party has been outraising the Democrats, individual Democratic candidates have been doing well raising funds,” Burden said. “This pattern has also been happening nationally in that federal Republican Party committees have been raising more but Democratic candidates have mostly been outraising their Republican opponents within districts and states. Big donations from a few wealthy individuals are keeping Republicans more competitive this year in Wisconsin, but the money alone will not guarantee them victory.”

Here are the most competitive Assembly races to watch in the Nov. 3 election:

  • Assembly District 21: The district is open following the retirement of Rep. Jessie Rodriguez, a longtime Republican incumbent. She won her 2024 term with 51.4% of the vote to 48.6% for her challenger. Democrat Daniel Bukiewicz, the mayor of Oak Creek, is facing Dylan Pfaffenbach, a Republican student at Carroll University, in November. 
  • Assembly District 26: Rep. Joe Sheehan (D-Sheboygan) faces a challenge from John Belanger, a Republican and former Sheboygan alderman. Sheehan won his 2024 election with 51.5% of the vote compared to 48.5% for his opponent, who was the Republican incumbent at the time.
  • Assembly District 30: Incumbent Rep. Shannon Zimmerman (R-River Falls), who was first elected in 2016, faces a challenge from Kevin Knoke, a Democratic veteran and educator from Hudson. Zimmerman won his 2024 election with 54.3% of the vote compared to 45.7% for his Democratic rival.
  • Assembly District 51: Rep. Todd Novak (R-Dodgeville) faces a challenge from Democrat Ben Gruber, a conservation warden in Wisconsin who is member of AFSCME Local 1215. Novak won his 2024 reelection bid with 51.7% of the vote compared to 48.3% for his Democratic challenger. 
  • Assembly District 53:  Republican David Daniels and Democrat Becky Nichols, a former Menasha city council member, are running for an open seat. It’s open due to the retirement of incumbent Rep. Dean Kaufert (R-Neenah).
  • Assembly District 61: Rep. Bob Donovan (R-Greenfield), who was first elected in 2022, faces a challenge from Democrat Ben Brist, an army veteran. Donovan won his 2024 election in with 51.6% of the vote compared with 48.4% for his challenger.
  • Assembly District 85: Rep. Patrick Snyder (R-Weston) faces a challenge from Democrat John Kroll, a Marathon county board supervisor. Snyder won his 2024 reelection bid against his Democratic challenger with 53.2% of the vote compared with  46.7% for his challenger.
  • Assembly District 88: Rep. Benjamin Franklin (R-De Pere) faces a challenge from Democrat Brandy Tollefson, a De Pere school board member. Franklin won his first term with 50.3% of the vote compared with 49.7% for the Democratic candidate.
  • Assembly District 89: Rep. Ryan Spaude (D-Ashwaubenon) faces a challenge from Bobby Lindsey, a retired law enforcement professional and a Marine Corps veteran. Spaude won his first term in 2024 with 51.4% of the vote compared with 48.6% for his opponent. 
  • Assembly District 92: Rep. Clint Moses (R-Menomonie) faces a challenge from Democrat Jeremiah Fredrickson, a fish farmer from Elk Mound. 
  • Assembly District 91: Democratic Rep. Jodi Emerson, who was first elected in 2018, faces a challenge from Republican Bruce Stabenow, an Osseo resident and small business owner. Emerson won her 2024 election with 51.6% of the vote compared with  48.4% for her Republican challenger. 
  • Assembly District 94: Democratic Rep. Steve Doyle faces a challenge from Keith Purnell, a Republican Army veteran. Doyle was first elected to the Assembly during a May 2011 special election and has been reelected since. He won reelection in 2024 by just 223 votes against the Republican candidate. The seat will be one of Democrats’ top seats to protect and the party has  already invested over $1 million in.


The New York Times: With a Gerrymander Vanquished, Wisconsin Democrats Aim for Control
By: David Chen | 9/7/2026

  • Sixteen years ago, Republicans in Wisconsin rode a national wave of discontent to wrest control of the legislature in Madison. Then they approved maps that locked in their power, even after Democrats took back nearly every statewide office.
  • This November, Democrats have a chance to do what seemed implausible a few short years ago: take control of the State Assembly and Senate while holding onto the governor’s mansion.
  • “I sincerely think this is the most important election that Wisconsin has ever seen,” said Dianne Hesselbein, the Democratic minority leader in the State Senate.
  • That is a well-worn, election-year trope but one the Democrats in Wisconsin may well believe. With a trifecta, Democrats would pivot away from a rightward shift defined by tax cuts, neutered labor unions and voter restrictions. It would also empower them to redraw a congressional map for 2028 to counter Republican gerrymandering threats throughout the South.
  • The Driftless region of Wisconsin, beyond where glaciers carved the land, is home to one of the fiercest, most important state senate fights.
  • Wisconsin Republicans in Green County and beyond have controlled the legislature for years, thanks in part to a heavily gerrymandered map that was recently redrawn.
  • “We’re just going to be passing bills that the residents want us to pass,” Ms. Hesselbein promised, citing affordability, health care and education.
  • Then, alluding to the divisive push in 2011 by the Republican former governor, Scott Walker, to strip public union bargaining rights, Ms. Hesselbein added: “We’re not going to be doing anything that’s going to bring 100,000 people protesting at the Capitol.”
  • If Democrats repeal that anti-collective bargaining act, hike school funding and create new entitlements, Mr. Vos warned, Wisconsin may go back to the discontent of 2009 and 2010 and multibillion-dollar deficits.
  • Democrats are favored in generic polling for the legislature, where Republicans have a 54-to-45 advantage in the Assembly, and 18-to-15 in the Senate, according to the Marquette poll. But Republicans have a 2-to-1 financial advantage with $43 million raised, campaign finance reports show.
  • Three of the most competitive Assembly races are nestled within the Third Congressional District in western Wisconsin.
  • In the congressional race, Rebecca Cooke, a Democrat and a waitress with farm-country bona fides, is challenging U.S. Representative Derrick Van Orden, a fiery Trump loyalist, in a race that could prove pivotal to control of the U.S. House.
  • Perhaps the most high-profile State Senate matchup is in the sprawling 17th District in the southwestern Driftless region, stretching from the Mississippi River bluffs to undulating cornfields just outside Madison. The current occupant, Howard Marklein, is co-chair of the powerful Joint Finance Committee.
  • His Democratic opponent, State Representative Jenna Jacobson, is a former financial analyst who criticizes Mr. Marklein and Republican leaders for failing to renew funding for outdoor recreation and land conservation projects.
  • Canvassing in Oregon, Wis., her hometown, Ms. Jacobson, 44, listened to constituents worried about the cost of living, “stopping Trump” and data centers.
  • Ms. Jacobson sought to regulate data centers’ water use and shield ratepayers, but the bill died. If Democrats win, she told Sue Capelle, a retired educator, “we can actually do some things that we just haven’t had leadership do recently.”
  • “We can actually do some things that we just haven’t had leadership do recently.” said Jenna Jacobson, if Democrats can take control of the statehouse in Madison.
  • Mr. Marklein, 71, is campaigning frantically, too, after cruising to victory by as much as 20 points under the old maps. In Wiota and Monroe, Wis., he distributed a flier that repeated the word “rural” eight times.