Wisconsin: The Maps Are In

February 19th, 2024

The maps are finally in. All the work of the last thirteen years has paid off: hundreds of candidates, thousands of volunteers, tens of thousands of doors knocked, and millions of volunteer hours has led to today. Democracy, my friends and fellow citizens, is a verb. You decide how much freedom we have.

A note to paid subscribers: I haven’t forgotten about the impeachment article, my week went pretty sideways immediately last week. I apologize for the delay, but its coming.

Wisconsin’s nickname, the Badger State, comes from the miners who helped to build our state’s economy and power 19th and early 20th century America. It is also a fair description of her citizens: tenacious, tough, and unwilling to yield in cases of aversity.

These maps are courtesy of the Daily Kos, first appearing in their article here. They deserve all the credit for putting them in this easy-to-digest format.

The Wisconsin Republican Party currently has a supermajority in the State Senate and is two away from a supermajority in the Assembly. In truly ludicrous statement, Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu stated that “Senate Republicans have won competitive races for twenty years. We don’t plan on stopping now.”

As PBS explains, these new maps do have some pairings, forcing some legislators to run against each other in some instances. Predictably, these are mainly Republican pairings owing to over a decade of unpredecented gerrymandering. In an even more dramatic statement, State Senator Van Wanggaard claimed, “Republicans were not stuck between a rock and hard place. It was a matter of choosing to be stabbed, shot, poisoned or led to the guillotine. We chose to be stabbed, so we can live to fight another day.”

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These maps are the ones proposed by Governor Evers. As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel pointed out, 45 Assembly seats favor Democrats and 46 favor Republicans, with the last 8 being true Tossups (within five points). 14 of the State Senate districts tilt Democratic and 15 tilt Republican, with 4 Tossups.

While it is objectively a good thing to have new maps, many feel a a little let down with the passage of them. The Governor’s maps were the ones that were most friendly to the Republicans out of the remaining ones that the State Supreme Court was considering. I, for one, feel like this is like settling for a ham sandwich when a porterhouse steak was an option. Call me a partisan hack if you want, but having lived in a state where the Republican Party has exploited every single lever of power possible, including a legislative coup days before Governor Evers took office, I do not believe they can be trusted to be honest governing partners. They have made it abundantly clear they see democracy as an impediment to their power, not a representation of the People’s will.

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Both Republican-supported maps were tossed by the State Supreme Court’s consultants for being unconstitutional. The four remaining for consideration were Governor Evers’s (Assembly and Senate), the Wright Petitioners (Assembly and Senate), Senate Democrats (Assembly and Senate) and Law Forward (Assembly and Senate). Of these, I think Law Forward was the most likely to be picked, which would have been slightly more friendly to Democrats, hence the source of being an incomplete victory.

Despite that, Wisconsin now has a legitimate opportunity to throw off the shackles of tyrannical Republican policies. While the Senate will not flip this year, it could in 2026. The whole Assembly will be up this year, and that could flip. It is now up to us come November.