Gov. Tony Evers says Senate Dems who voted against the $1.8 billion surplus deal have put themselves in an “untenable position” ahead of the November elections after all 15 of them voted with three Republicans to kill the bill.

“They believe that somehow putting money back into people’s pockets that are struggling financially across the state, apparently they don’t believe that’s an issue,” Evers told WISN 12’s “UpFront,” produced in partnership with WisPolitics-State Affairs. “They’re going to say, ‘Well, we’re going to fix it next time when all these wonderful things happen after Evers is gone, and we’ll get a new governor and we’ll have Democrats all over the place.’ That’s fine. That’s a wish list, and who knows what else is going to happen. But you’re impacting kids right now. Impacting children right now. It’s a bad place for Democrats to be.”

Evers said his administration was assured enough Republican voters were there to pass both chambers, a claim several Republican senators have dismissed.

“Certainly,” Evers said. “No question. No question.”

The governor said politics killed the bill.

“We had it,” Evers said. “We worked with the leadership, majority leadership in both houses, had things were in a place where I thought, everybody thought that we’d be in good shape, and in the Assembly, it did work out that way; in the Senate it didn’t. And we could blame Tom (Tiffany) because he reached out to people, but at the end of the day … whatever he does in his spare time isn’t really germane to me.”

Evers said objections raised by Tiffany, the now-GOP endorsed candidate for governor, to the bill “didn’t help,” including his calls to Republicans expressing opposition to the package.

“That played a role,” Evers said. “But at the end of the day, we had Democrats on the Senate side that basically were saying we can’t support this because of various things that frankly I’m shocked they would say we don’t want to do this for schools. That’s bad politics for Democrats in the Senate, and I was shocked at that.”

The governor said he is most disappointed in the education funding aspect of the deal that failed, specifically the hundreds of millions of dollars meant to increase the special education reimbursement rate.

“It’s not that I’m leaving office thinking this is the worst thing ever, but it damn near is, when people say they don’t have the willingness to give some money to the schools when they could. That’s a bad place.”

The governor still maintained he won’t endorse in the Democratic primary for governor.

“It says bad about politics, on the Republican side and Democratic side,” Evers said about the deal failing in general. “It’s broken. We have to fix it. I don’t think we’re going to fix it anytime soon. But hopefully they do.”

Winnebago County Exec Gordon Hintz, who served as Assembly minority leader during Evers’ first term, called the governor’s comments on “UpFront” “dishonest, disingenuous, and disappointing.”

He noted on X that 30% of Wisconsin adults wouldn’t have qualified for the rebates of $600 per couple and $300 per individual, including some on Social Security, and the property tax savings on the median-valued home would’ve been a little more than $100.

The fiscal impact of the plan would’ve created a $2.9 billion structural deficit heading into the 2027-29 budget that the state would’ve had to make up through revenue growth, spending cuts, tax increases or a combination of the three.

“The total lack of leadership demonstrated in working out a deal with Democratic leadership is what created this mess. Don’t be a dick and say Democratic legislators who have carried your water the past 8 years don’t believe ‘people struggling financially’ is an issue,” Hintz wrote. “It is hard to watch someone who just seems like he is on a mission to torch his entire legacy and attempt to take Dems down with him in the fall.”

Also on the program, Republican Party of Wisconsin Chairman Brian Schimming told “UpFront” he’s “excited about where we are” headed into November and coming off this weekend’s state party convention.

“We’re raising money; we’re doing all the right things to win in November,” said Schimming, who also dismissed previous efforts to oust him after conservative candidate Maria Lazar lost by 20 points in April’s Supreme Court race.

Schimming said those targeting him have never been a majority of the party’s executive committee.

“But I just say to people on the issue of the Supreme Court race … the first of the three (races) the candidate wouldn’t take our money, literally would not take our money,” Schimming said. “And the second year, last year, we almost put $10 million into that race. The untold story on that is the state party moved almost $10 million into that race, and this year, I think the challenge is the incumbent didn’t get out until almost September, and that is really a late hour to start a statewide campaign.”

Schimming said for upcoming elections the party has secured enough poll worker volunteers and is launching a new volunteer effort to “recruit new additional volunteers that don’t always get into it in the off year.”

“I always say when I used to speak at Trump rallies and conventions in the past, I always tell people the win is not in this room,” Schimming said. “It’s out there. If people leave that convention and go out and immediately start working for that win, we’ll have a good November.”

See more from the show.