FROM THE ARCHIVES: The Recombobulation Area’s Wisconsin State Legislature Election Preview Series
FROM THE ARCHIVES: The Recombobulation Area’s Wisconsin State Legislature Election Preview Series
We previewed every race on the ballot in the State Senate and State Assembly in 2020 and 2022, and we're going to be doing it again in 2024 as the legislature holds landmark elections under new maps.
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The Recombobulation Area is a ten-time THIRTEEN-TIME Milwaukee Press Club award-winning weekly opinion column and online publication written, edited and published by longtime Milwaukee journalist Dan Shafer. Learn more about it here.
In both 2020 and 2022, The Recombobulation Area was the only publication crazy enough to preview every race on the ballot in the Wisconsin State Legislature.
We’re going to be doing it again this year. And with new maps, it’s going to be quite the year for elections in the Wisconsin State Legislature.
All 99 seats in the State Assembly will be on the ballot, as will half of the State Senate (all even-numbered districts), and this is the first time in more than a decade where candidates will not be running on maps that are not among most egregiously extreme partisan gerrymanders in the country. Gone are the days when a Republican majority was so entrenched that it would be more likely for the GOP to gain a two-thirds supermajority than for Democrats to win a simple majority in this 50-50 purple state. We are going to have fairer maps now, there’s going to be far more competitive districts, and Democrats will have a real chance at flipping the Assembly.
It’s a whole new ballgame, folks.
Here at The Recombobulation Area, we are going to spend a lot of time over the next few months taking a look at those races happening in the Senate and Assembly, from the big picture of the balance of power to every last race in every corner of the state. We’ve already taken an early look at some of the early projections, and we’ve been monitoring many of the announcements from candidates and campaigns, but we know there’s going to be a whole lot more coming soon, and once we get past the primary, it’ll be a sprint to Election Day on Nov. 5.
But before we go down that road, let’s take a look back at how we got here.
Our state legislative election preview series really broke through in 2022 — it won a Milwaukee Press Club Excellence in Journalism award for Best Public Service Story or Series — but our first time doing this was in 2020.
In 2020, the Republican-controlled legislature was in the midst of an extended period of inaction that earned it the unenviable distinction of being the nation’s least-active full-time state legislature. This, of course, was at a time of genuine crisis, and this inaction had profound ramifications at this critical moment.
So, we previewed every race on the ballot. Using our own special blend of data, projections, analysis and reporting, we took a comprehensive look at what was transpiring in the campaign — in everything from close races to ones uncontested.
We did it again in 2022, previewing all 116 races on the ballot in the Wisconsin State Legislature. Under new maps for the 2020’s, Republicans had drawn themselves a path to a supermajority with a somehow even-worse gerrymander than the one from the 2010’s. The GOP did reach that two-thirds supermajority in the Senate, but came just two seats short of doing the same in the Assembly.
We’ve made all of this available free from our archives, all put together here in one place.
As we look out on this new landscape under new maps, we’re going to be tracking campaigns, learning about candidates, monitoring issues, and getting our best possible understanding of what’s ahead for these landmark elections now that Wisconsin has freed itself from The Gerrymander.
It’s going to be a big part of our coverage here for the next few months, and we’re so glad to have you along for the ride. There’s a lot of recombobulating on state legislative elections in our future, that’s for sure.
Any campaign announcements, press releases and news tips can be sent to therecombobulationarea@gmail.com.
Dan Shafer is a journalist from Milwaukee who writes and publishes The Recombobulation Area. 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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