Assembly Speaker Robin Vos is pushing to hold another vote in the Legislature after a popular tax relief deal failed to pass the state Senate. 

“I still think we can get it done,” Vos said on WISN 12’s “UpFront,” which is produced in partnership with WisPolitics. “I think that we should go back in. I’ve asked the governor’s office to try to have us get another attempt to do it.”

The Rochester Republican referenced a new Marquette University Law School poll finding broad support for the $1.8 billion deal using money from the state’s surplus. It failed in the GOP-run Senate with all 15 Senate Democrats and three Republicans voting against the deal.

“Senate Democrats, hopefully when they look at this poll and realize, look we can’t even get people in Wisconsin to agree what day of the week it is,” Vos said. “And if 80% of the people say this deal should have been passed, let’s give them some confidence that government can actually get things done to help real people in real time, and let’s come back and do it in June.”

Vos said it’s realistic to pass it before the fall elections.

“The Assembly will come back, and I can tell you right now we are ready to go,” Vos added. “I’ve talked to our leadership team. We want to get this deal done. I reached out to the governor’s office. I have not heard back…Why would we wait until November when people are suffering right now?”

When asked who was to blame for killing the deal, Vos said, “Oh, there’s no doubt it’s three Senate Republicans, right? They were the ones who should have gotten this deal done.”

State Sen. Chris Kapenga, one of the three Senate GOP no votes, said last week on “UpFront” it was a matter of failed leadership. GOP Sens. Rob Hutton, of Brookfield, and Steve Nass, of Whitewater, joined Kapenga in voting against the bill.

“Sen. Kapenga was one of the ones who pushed the hardest to have rebates,” Vos said. “And my understanding is he told his caucus if rebate checks were included he could support the deal. Well, rebates were included, and somehow he changed his mind. Now my understanding is, from other sources, that he spent most of the day when we were trying to get the votes to work together, he didn’t reply to the text messages I sent or the requests that I had to meet with him, saying ‘What do you need?’ And I guess that’s because I’ve learned he was actually with the Democrats, caucusing with them and spending time with them, convincing them to not vote for the bill.”

Vos said both Republican leaders and Gov. Tony Evers were assured and believed the votes were there to pass the $1.8 billion deal before it was announced publicly.

The measure would have delivered rebate checks, no tax on tips or overtime, and invested hundreds of millions of dollars in schools to lower property taxes and increase special education funding.

“Obviously anybody who watches this knows I didn’t vote for Tony Evers,” Vos said. “I’m not his biggest fan, but in this one circumstance, he did a really good job. He sat down, he negotiated in good faith. We came to a compromise where everybody got what they thought was in the best interest of the people that they were most worried about. We were focused on taxpayers. They were focused on schools, but we both agreed that the other’s priorities were important. So look, he delivered. He said that I think I can get some Democrats to vote for it. He did in the Assembly, but for whatever reason, Senate Democrats said we’re going to play politics with it.”

Vos added, “We just need some Senate Democrats to actually show some leadership. They say they want to be in charge. Well, it means making hard decisions at times when you really have to step up, so they still have a chance.”

Marquette Law School poll director Charles Franklin says a major takeaway from the surplus deal poll is “how even the support is across party, across ideology and across regions of the state.”

Broadly, the poll found 80% of Wisconsinites wanted lawmakers to pass the deal.

“We told people that there were people who were doubtful about the bill, were concerned about a future budget deficit and that this, of course, is a projected surplus, not an actual surplus at this point,” Franklin told “UpFront.” “Even with that information, 69% still said it should pass. Only 21% said it should wait a year or wait until next year, and that’s down from 11% from overall support, but it’s still more than two-thirds who say even with the budget uncertainty for next year, they want these benefits to come.”

The question, Franklin also attempted to discern, is what, if any, impact the failed vote will have during the November election.

“Twenty-five percent said this would be very important for their votes in the fall, over 70% said very or somewhat important,” Franklin said. “However, I want to caution it is still a ways off from the election, and I don’t know that this particular vote will be the key issue, but I think we can absolutely bet that property taxes and school funding are going to be high on the agenda for the fall campaign for both parties.”

Mitchell Berman, who announced raising more than $500,000 for his 1st CD campaign, argues he’s the best Dem to take on GOP U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil.

“If there’s one thing that I’ve learned in this campaign, it’s that it’s a snowball,” Berman told “UpFront.” “We have started to create momentum. We’re seeing the fruits of our labor, and look, I’m not a politician. I didn’t start with a big Rolodex of millionaires that I could just call up and have my campaign coffers full. We’ve done this through phone calls and handshakes and small house parties.”

Berman, an emergency room nurse from Franklin, is one of four Dems who have announced plans to seek the party’s nomination to challenge Steil. Berman, UW-Whitewater administrator Miguel Aranda and Milwaukee Ald. Peter Burgelis had all filed nomination papers with the state Elections Commission as of late last week. Randy Bryce, who lost to Steil in 2018 and had filed to run, hadn’t turned in his signatures as of the latest update from the state Elections Commission.

“I’ll tell you the conversations that we’ve been having with folks out in the district, when we get to talking about how Bryan Steil voted for the ‘big ugly bill,’ and that made cuts to Medicaid, it cut, slashed food assistance for our seniors and for kids in schools, folks were very quick to sign our nomination papers,” Berman said.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has listed the 1st CD as one of its targets for 2026. Steil won his 2024 race by 10 points.

“Congress, it’s not reflective of the people who are here in our district,” Berman said. “We are in a system right now that is broken, and people recognize that, and that system was created by politicians. So I think the only way that we’re going to fix it is to bring someone in from the outside, and to be honest with you, I think that’s one of our strengths. I think we need more nurses, more teachers, more people who have actually experienced some of the things that people at home are dealing with.”

ABC News’ chief global affairs correspondent, Martha Raddatz, is out with a new book called “The Hero Next Door.” It profiles service members and their families, both in war zones and back home.

“I have known many of them for more than 20 years, and I think what I wanted to show was not only the heroism on the battlefield, and there’s a lot of that in this book, but when they got back home or when they got out of the service or what they’re still doing today in the service,” Raddatz told “UpFront.” “So to me, that timeline of this extraordinary 9/11 generation, and these are really the 9/11 generation of warriors.”

Raddatz added, “When I covered and went off to cover the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, I just formed bonds with these people. And I did not want to discard them. I didn’t want to move on to the next story and leave them behind. So there are people, for the most part, who I have stayed in touch with over these many years and what they have done since to find purpose, to keep at it, to go forward, to find a way to serve outside the military or still inside the military is the thing that really gripped me.”

See more from the show.