2024 Wisconsin State Legislature Voter Guide: The State Senate
2024 Wisconsin State Legislature Voter Guide: The State Senate
It won’t be until 2026 when Democrats have a realistic chance to flip the State Senate, but several key races will significantly shift the balance of power in the legislature’s upper chamber.
The Recombobulation Area is a thirteen-time Milwaukee Press Club award-winning weekly opinion column and online publication founded by longtime Milwaukee journalist Dan Shafer. The Recombobulation Area is now part of Civic Media.
This is part of The Recombobulation Area and Civic Media’s 2024 Wisconsin State Legislature Voter Guide. Read the first part of the series, ”New Board, New Game,” here.
Among the duties the Wisconsin State Senate is responsible for is to confirm appointments made by the governor to lead various state agencies, boards and commissions. But, as Tony Evers was set to begin his second term as governor in January of 2023, the Republican-controlled State Senate was yet to confirm nearly 180 of the governor’s appointments from his first term — a comically absurd number.
For many of these appointments, the State Senate kept these individuals in a sort of perpetual limbo, where those appointed to serve in these roles, worked full-time in these roles, but at any moment, Republicans in the chamber could vote to reject any of these appointments, effectively firing them. In October of 2023, Senate Republicans did just that. In response, State Sen Melissa Agard, the Senate’s Democratic Leader, called this rejection “unprecedented,” noting that since 1981, only five executive appointments had been rejected. This happened again in March of 2024, and has happened several times during this era of divided government in Wisconsin.
These rather unprecedented instances serve as examples of how Senate Republicans have repeatedly abandoned the norms of governing in the state of Wisconsin, taking hyper-partisan action on things that had previously been customary duties of the legislative branch.
Consider, too, that one of the appointments Senate Republicans did make — and have not rescinded despite repeated calls to do so — is Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu re-appointing Bob Spindell to the Wisconsin Elections Commission, which happened after Spindell was one the state’s 10 “fake electors,” as part of the Republican effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election (which Spindell and the nine others later admitted to in court to settle a civil lawsuit).
Part of why the Republicans running things in the legislature have been able to repeatedly take actions like these, though, is because they are so insulated from the type of accountability that can normally be delivered at the ballot box, as the state legislature’s gerrymandered maps made it nearly impossible for Democrats to win a simple majority.
The Wisconsin State Senate has been under Republican control since the 2010 election, winning distinct majorities each election year after those gerrymandered maps gave them major advantages from 2012 onward. Before the 2022 election, Republican-advanced maps pushed the boundaries even further, with the GOP drawing themselves a path to a supermajority.
They succeeded in the Senate, winning 22 of the chamber’s 33 seats. But without an Assembly supermajority, the impact of that advantage was limited. But from an electoral standpoint, this serves as a clear example of just how tilted these maps had become, where Republicans could achieve a two-thirds supermajority in such a closely divided purple state.
Now, with new maps, the days of a Republican path to a two-thirds supermajority in an otherwise 50-50 state appear to be over. But that does not yet mean the Senate majority is in play for Democrats.
Earlier this year, as decision time neared on selecting new maps, a certain point emerged that differentiated some of the map submissions being considered by the Court-appointed experts — the numbering of Senate districts. Some parties’ maps had renumbered the entire Senate, which would have put the majority in play this year, but some did not. Maps submitted by Gov. Tony Evers did not, and those are the ones that were eventually signed into law.
So, the majority in the Senate will not realistically be in play for Democrats until 2026. Senators serve four-year terms, and those in even-numbered districts are up this year, and the senators in odd-numbered districts break down with 12 Republicans and just five Democrats (and even if some of those Republican senators in odd-numbered districts are drawn into ones with even numbers, they do not have to move until their term is up in two years). So, even before this year’s election, the overall balance of the chamber for the 2025-26 session starts with a 12-5 GOP advantage.
However, while Democrats are contesting every race in the State Senate this year, Republicans are leaving five uncontested, effectively moving that balance to 12-10 before we all head to the polls in November.
If Democrats win races in the five close races and toss-up seats we’ve identified in this preview — far from impossible, but going 5-for-5 would be a challenge — they’d get to 15. But you need 17 seats for the Senate majority. Democrats would have to win a race in the 24th to defeat State Sen. Testin in an R+15 seat, and win one more seat that’s at least a R+20 district. So, for Democrats, winning the State Senate majority in 2024 is the longest of long-shots.
Picking up seats is quite likely, though, and it’s possible that having a closer overall margin with some swing senators in the next session could change the way the Senate operates. But as far as the Democrats’ path to a Senate majority is concerned, this is about positioning for 2026. Then, there will be potentially flippable seats in the 5th (Hutton, D+3.4), 17th (Marklein, D+7.8), and 21st (Wanggaard, R+2.2).
To be in that position, Democrats will need to win several key races this year. There is a path for them to do so.
So, let’s recombobulate, and preview the 16 seats on the ballot this year in the Wisconsin State Senate.
See the full district-by-district breakdown at Civic Media.
You can also see each of these races on its own district page (see below), and explore the Civic Media Voter Guide here.
COMING SOON: The Recombobulation Area and Civic Media’s 2024 Wisconsin State Legislature Election Preview of the State Assembly.
Dan Shafer is a journalist from Milwaukee who writes and publishes The Recombobulation Area. In 2024, he became the Political Editor of Civic Media. He’s also written for The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Heartland Signal, Belt Magazine, WisPolitics, and Milwaukee Record. He previously worked at Seattle Magazine, Seattle Business Magazine, the Milwaukee Business Journal, Milwaukee Magazine, and BizTimes Milwaukee. He’s won 18 Milwaukee Press Club Excellence in Journalism Awards. He’s on Twitter at @DanRShafer.
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