Key retirements and poor polling for Republicans suggest Assembly majority is in play for Democrats
Jessie Rodriguez retiring from the Assembly is a big deal for the GOP's chances this fall, and polling shared with The Recombobulation Area on five key districts show Republicans in trouble.
The Recombobulation Area is a 19-time 21-TIME! Milwaukee Press Club award-winning opinion column and online publication founded by longtime Milwaukee journalist Dan Shafer. The Recombobulation Area is now part of Civic Media.
Last week, a key state representative in a swing district announced she would be retiring from the Assembly. This is a big deal — and it’s a signal of what could be happening downballot for Republicans in 2026.
Republican Jessie Rodriguez has represented the 21st Assembly District since winning a special election in 2013. Though the lines have changed a few times while she’s been in office, this district has largely included the southeastern portion of Milwaukee County, including the city of Oak Creek. Throughout this time, Rodriguez — an immigrant born in El Salvador, the first Hispanic Republican elected to the legislature — has been a strong candidate, consistently out-running the top of the ticket. In 2022, she won by a nine-point margin in a district Trump won by 5% in 2020. In 2024, as the newly redrawn 21st went for Kamala Harris by a four-point margin and Tammy Baldwin by a nearly seven-point margin, Rodriguez won again, by about 3%.
Here in 2026, the top Democrat running in the 21st is Dan Bukiewicz, who has served as the mayor of Oak Creek since 2018, and has been the elected President of the Milwaukee Building and Construction Trades Council since 2014. He was also just endorsed by Sen. Tammy Baldwin1. He had a very good chance of flipping this district even before Rodriguez’s retirement news, and with first-time candidate Dylan Pfaffenbach announcing a run as a Republican in the district, Bukiewicz should now be seen as the favorite here in a distinct flip opportunity for Democrats.
The impact of Rodriguez’s decision not to run for re-election will reverberate far beyond the 21st. This, along with other retirements and a political environment looking increasingly challenging for Republicans heading into the midterms, is a significant blow to the GOP’s chances of keeping the Assembly in their control after the fall election.
Republicans currently hold 54 of the 99 seats in the Assembly, meaning Democrats will need to flip at least2 five seats in order to win a majority. Given how important incumbency can be in downballot races, even in what projects to be an advantageous midterm election year for Democrats, I have been of the mindset that Republicans are still the favorites to win control of the Assembly come November.
But after this announcement from Rodriguez, the Assembly is looking like much more of a toss-up. Democrats winning control of the Senate has already been looking like an increasingly likely scenario — given some recent retirement announcements from Rob Hutton, Van Wanggaard and Jesse James — and now the first Democratic trifecta in more than 15 years is legitimately in play.
That’s made all the more clear in polling recently released by A Better Wisconsin Together, conducted by Public Policy Polling (PPP), which looked at five potentially flippable Assembly districts, including the 21st. Even with Rodriguez on the ballot, polling showed a generic “Democratic candidate” leading by a nine-point margin.
This poll also measured the favorability of both Rodriguez and President Donald Trump. Rodriguez’s favorability is a net even (32% favorable - 32% unfavorable, 35% not sure), while Trump’s is far underwater, a net minus-18 (38% favorable - 56% unfavorable, 5% not sure). If midterm elections are a referendum on the party in power, Trump’s dismal favorability in many of these districts is going to make for some tough conversations for Republicans out canvassing and talking to voters in downballot races like this.
This poll also showed that only 8% of voters in the 21st said the state legislature “has done enough to address rising costs,” with more than 80% saying they “have not done enough.” Similar numbers bear out in the four other districts polled, which includes districts 30, 51, 61, and 85. Incumbency will come with its own set of challenges for Republicans this year.
In each of those districts, the generic Democrat holds a lead in head-to-head polling against the Republican incumbent. The closest of those is in the 30th District — the one district of these five won by both Donald Trump and Eric Hovde in 2024 — which is currently represented by Republican Shannon Zimmerman.
The polling shows that Trump is wildly unpopular. In each of these five districts, he has a double-digit net-negative favorability rating. His unfavorable number is also over 50% in each district.
Of these five districts, three were won by both Kamala Harris and Tammy Baldwin in 2024 — the 21st, 51st and 61st.
In the 51st, in southwestern Wisconsin, Republican Todd Novak — who has won many close races over the years — is running for a seventh term. He’s likely to face Democrat Ben Gruber, former president of the Conservation Wardens Local 1215, in the general election. Novak is polling behind the “generic Democrat” in the district, and Gruber might have better name ID than other candidates, after he was part of a noteworthy case where the Wisconsin Employment Relations Council ruled that the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources retaliated against Gruber and other DNR wardens. "I feel it's just vindicating what we've been saying for 2½ years that our management operates unchecked, and was really abusing their authority to retaliate and discriminate," Gruber told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in an interview.
In the 61st, in Milwaukee’s southwestern suburbs, Republican Bob Donovan is running for re-election, he announced last week, and several Democrats — Brian Bock, Ben Brist, Lawanda Chambers — will compete in a primary to take him on in the general election. Donovan has far more name recognition than your typical state representative, so this district will still be a challenge for Democrats, but his poll numbers suggest the opportunity to unseat him is there.
Also included in these polling numbers is the 85th, which has the distinction of being the only district in the state won by both Donald Trump and Tammy Baldwin. There, Patrick Snyder is running again, after winning by a more than 6% margin in 2024. He is likely to face Marathon County Board Supervisor John Kroll, who is running as a Democrat.
Along with these five districts included in the PPP/A Better Wisconsin Together poll, there are three other districts that will be important to watch.
One is the 88th, in Brown County, currently represented by Republican Benjamin Franklin. The race for this seat was the closest race in the entire Assembly in 2024, decided by just over 200 votes. Franklin is running again, likely to face De Pere School Board member Brandy Tollefson.
Another is the 94th, north of La Crosse, currently represented by Steve Doyle, the Assembly’s lone Democrat to win in a Trump-won district in 2024. Doyle is running again, he recently told WIZM. No Republican challenger has announced a bid as of yet, but a campaign committee for Keith Purnell has recently been registered in the district. Doyle should be the favorite here.
And then there is the 53rd, located in the Fox Valley, including the cities of Neenah and Menasha. This district is represented by Republican Dean Kaufert, the former mayor of Neenah, who was recently in the news following a Heartland Signal inquiry into a sexual harassment investigation that occurred in 2019, where “multiple employees of the city pool confirmed hearing Kaufert say he couldn’t be trusted around 16-year-old girls.”
Days after this report was published, Kaufert announced he is not running for re-election. The Democrat running in this district — the second-closest Assembly race in the state in 2024 — is Lauri Asbury, who has served on the Neenah School Board for 10 years, and is involved in a variety of area organizations in the Fox Valley region.
While Democrats might have advantageous opportunities in each of these districts, Republicans will still inevitably play hardball in these races — and we’re already seeing some evidence of this. As Wisconsin Watch recently reported, the lobbying group the Jobs First Coalition, led by Michelle Litjens, a former state legislator who is now married to Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, has released ads backing Donovan, Franklin, Novak, and Snyder, highlighting their support of bills expanding postpartum Medicaid coverage for new moms, and for breast cancer screening bill known as “Gail’s Law.”
You may recall that Assembly Republicans left the Capitol during debate over those bills to meet with — you guessed it! — Jobs First Wisconsin, for a fundraiser.
Several of these electorally vulnerable lawmakers were trotted out in a late-night press conference to support these bills — bills that Democrats had been advocating for for years, and had maneuvered to force a vote on in this final day of the legislative session — in an attempt to take credit for them passing. The shamelessness of all of this is just unfathomable (see: this reel, from our friend Kate Duffy at Motherhood for Good).
But with Robin Vos still reportedly involved in the Republican Assembly Campaign Committee (RACC) despite his own retirement from the Assembly, you can expect many more shenanigans like this, especially with the Uihlein-Hendricks billionaire bucks backing them.
Bottom line, though? There are many opportunities for Democrats to flip seats in the Assembly, and between key retirements and polling suggesting a bleak electoral environment for Republicans headed into the midterms, the most difficult piece of winning a Democratic trifecta is more likely than ever.
Dan Shafer is a journalist from Milwaukee who writes and publishes The Recombobulation Area. In 2024, he and the publication joined Civic Media, where he is currently a Contributing Editor. He’s 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 24 Milwaukee Press Club Excellence in Journalism Awards. He’s on Twitter at @DanRShafer.
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There is another Democratic candidate in this race — David Liners — who has been endorsed by Citizen Action of Wisconsin and State Sen. Chris Larson. Another candidate, Jessica Seawright, had also launched a campaign and had several endorsements, but suspended her campaign in January.
This would also mean that Republicans would not flip any Democratic-held seats, in such a scenario. There’s also the issue regarding State Rep. Sylvia Ortiz-Velez, who represents District 8, located on Milwaukee’s south side. She left the Democratic caucus last year following a dispute that resulted in her pleading no contest to a misdemeanor disorderly conduct charge. Ortiz-Velez was investigated by Wisconsin State Capitol police over allegations from fellow legislators saying she referenced using an assault rifle on her colleagues. Ismael Luna is running to challenge her in the upcoming primary, if she decides to run again.
Yes, but Evers just sabotaged the possibility of a blue wave with his latest secret collaboration with Vos. It's the most short-sighted thing Evers has done in his lackluster 8 years.
i really dont think assembly level politicians hold much power against national waves outside of their own personal fundraising and campaign organizing experience. Nobody knows who their assemblyperson is. I'm a political junkie and can barely remember Barbara Dietrrich exists or that Kapenga(?) is my state senator.