Could Brittany Kinser win the race for State Superintendent?
This could be the most competitive race for the Superintendent of Public Instruction in decades.
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.
In the upcoming Spring Election, the highest-profile race is the one for Wisconsin Supreme Court, the latest in Wisconsin’s seemingly endless number of everything-on-the-line elections.
The undercard, then, is the race for State Superintendent of Public Instruction. Elections for this ostensibly nonpartisan office have not always attracted much attention, but this year’s race might buck that trend.
And while in Wisconsin, statewide races are often decided by razor-thin margins, elections for State Superintendent have historically not been all that close. In the 2021 election, an open contest with no incumbent, Dr. Jill Underly won by a more than 15-point margin, defeating Deborah Kerr by about 58% to 42%. That was closer than the marks that now-Governor and former State Superintendent Tony Evers was re-elected with, receiving more than 60% of the vote in both 2013 and 2017 after winning an open race in 2009 with just over 57% of the vote. Evers’ predecessor as State Superintendent, Elizabeth Burmaster, received at least 60% of the vote both times she ran for the role. The election for State Superintendent has not been one decided by a less than double-digit margin since John Benson was re-elected to the position in 1997, winning 54.7% of the vote.
So, races for this office have not been closely competitive for quite some time. And while those who have won elections for State Superintendent have been relatively more Democratic-aligned, it’s still been a role in the tradition of the office being a nonpartisan one, and has been a role held largely by former school administrators.
But now, in 2025, we could very well be looking at a more competitive election for State Superintendent than we’ve seen in some time. Given the dynamics in this race and how closely tied outcomes and turnout might be to the race for Wisconsin Supreme Court, it stands to reason this could end up being the closest race for the office we’ve seen in decades.
Brittany Kinser — an education consultant and former executive at a charter school, who also was the CEO (and a lobbyist) for pro-charter nonprofit City Forward Collective — advanced to the head-to-head general election after advancing in the primary, coming in second behind Underly. Underly ended up with 38% of the vote, Kinser with 35% and Jeff Wright, superintendent of Sauk Prairie Schools, was the odd man out with just over 27%.
There are a couple different ways you could read these results. One is that the two Democratic-aligned candidates, Underly (who was endorsed by WisDems) and Wright (a self-described Democrat) combined for more than 65% of the vote, suggesting that this race might not be all that close, after all.
But on the other hand, an incumbent candidate getting only 38% of the vote in a primary could be seen as a bit of a red flag for her re-election campaign. And while Wright was running in this race for several months, Kinser’s campaign launched just before the filing deadline — reversing course and joining the race at the last minute. Clearly, though, donors were ready, as she raised more than $500,000 — including an amount more than triple what Underly or Wright pulled in in the pre-primary period — with many high-dollar contributions from Republican-favoring donors (Dick and Liz Uihlein, Diane Hendricks, etc.). This is a campaign built to compete.
And Underly has drawn the ire of Republicans on a number of issues, including the oversight of the ongoing disaster that is the administration in charge at Milwaukee Public Schools (and curious timing in DPI’s reveal of the financial reporting crisis at the state’s largest school district), as well as on new testing standards — a decision Republican state legislators aimed to reverse in a bill passed in the Assembly just last week.
On those new testing benchmarks, while it can seem as if Underly and the Department of Public Instruction are lowering standards for students in Wisconsin, there’s a certain complexity to the issue — and new State Rep. and longtime Sheboygan superintendent Joe Sheehan offered a solid explanation of this in his first speech as a state legislator. Nevertheless, there’s salience in the simplicity of the talking point about lowering standards, and the counterpoint amounts to a classic Democratic issue problem, where if you’re explaining, you’re losing. And since even Gov. Tony Evers called changing the testing benchmarks a “mistake,” this is clearly going to be A Thing in this race, and could be problematic for Underly.
I’ll once again admit there are many aspects of education policy that I really struggle to understand. To reiterate a point I made in a mailbag column last year, because so much of the data surrounding education policy seems to be so preposterously agenda-driven, it’s a field where it seems especially difficult to find the signal in the noise. I support public schools and generally think education at all levels is underfunded — teachers, especially, should be paid more — but I also think there are deep, systemic problems with the way we fund schools and educate children in this country, and the whole arena is ripe for reform.
And while there’s a whole lot about the so-called “school choice” movement that I fundamentally disagree with, there is, however, an aspect of this broader effort that I do appreciate, and that is the recognition that the status quo is not working.
Do I agree with their proposed solutions? I sure don’t. But I do think the system needs significant reform. What shape that should take, I’m not sure — I’m open to ideas! — but on this issue and so many others, Democrats and those on the left need to remember to be the party of change and reform — not the defenders of an establishment that is no longer working for people.
From a bigger picture standpoint, this broader position of defending a broken status quo is, I surmise, a major part of the reason why Kamala Harris and so many Democrats lost in the 2024 election. Despite being the former president, Trump’s 2024 campaign painted him as the outsider and change agent, and at a moment when anti-establishment sentiment is running high, that proved to be an effective approach. The Underly campaign could risk falling into the same trap as Harris found herself in by defending something not worth defending, if they’re not careful.
Because let’s not forget, Kinser was not the only candidate to challenge Underly in the primary. Jeff Wright ran a spirited campaign, and for quite some time was the only candidate running against the incumbent — against Underly. It will be interesting to see how the Underly and Kinser campaigns will make overtures to win over the 27% of the electorate that voted for Wright in the primary.
Then again, the electorate for this race will expand significantly as we head to the general election, and it will very much be tied to what’s happening in the race for Wisconsin Supreme Court. Because as that race attracts tens of millions of dollars in spending, including from Elon Musk, it stands to reason that those campaigning and knocking doors in favor of right-wing candidate Brad Schimel will also be backing Brittany Kinser for State Superintendent. Such is the case for both WisDems-backed candidates in Underly and Susan Crawford, too. The level of “ticket splitting” in this race will be something to monitor.
Incumbency matters a great deal in Wisconsin elections, too, and matters even more as you go further down the ballot. That should mean Underly is still going into this general election as the favorite. But given Kinser’s strong fundraising and the problems with defending the status quo — incumbency can be a double-edged sword at a time like this, after all — there’s reason to believe that Kinser has a real chance in this race.
It’s possible there has never been a candidate like Kinser who has been truly competitive in the race for State Superintendent. She’s talked about being more of a moderate, has characterized herself as a “Blue Dog Democrat” and said she’s donated to Tammy Baldwin, and while that might be true, the Republican Party of Wisconsin celebrated her primary victory, and she is clearly the more conservative candidate of the two in this race. It’s more than apparent that many on the right see an opportunity with Kinser and her campaign, and that should be setting off alarm bells.
The contest between Underly and Kinser isn’t going to draw the headlines, attention or funding that the Wisconsin Supreme Court race will, but this is a very important and genuinely unique race for State Superintendent.
Underly is still the favorite, but this could be the most competitive election for this office that we’ve seen in the 21st Century, and in uncertain times, you can’t rule out an upset. Don’t sleep on this race.
Find more conversation about this column from today’s edition of “Civic Media Mornings,” guest hosted by Dan Shafer.
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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I wonder, with the large number of districts going to referendum on the same ballot, how that will affect the vote for superintendent? Those that are motivated (either way) to go to the polls because of their local referendum...are they more pro-Underly or pro-Kinser?
Yes, she's actually likely to win, unless turnout trends with Spring Elections play out as they have.
In this era of emotional voting where all it takes is some rage inducing crap on enough podcasts to win, they only need to convince 50% + 1 *voters* (not *people*) that "Underly ... Bad ... Changed Tests ... Kids Dumb ... Bathrooms" and "Kinser ... Choice ... Good ... Fix".
Or, since we're on a roller coaster, maybe there'll have been just enough chaos by then that the turnout gets enough people who are willing to swallow some pride and vote just to "not eff it up any more right now".
March 14th government shutdown yea/may will be a forecasting inflection point.