'It’s a new day in Wisconsin.' Your votes made that happen.
RIP to The Gerrymander.
The Recombobulation Area is a ten-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.
The Gerrymander that has warped politics in Wisconsin, cementing an outsized Republican stranglehold over the levers of power in the legislative branch in this 50-50 purple state for more than 12 years, is now gone.
On the morning of Feb. 19, at the state Capitol in Madison, Tony Evers signed new maps into law.
“Folks, it’s a new day in Wisconsin, and a beautiful day for democracy,” the Democratic governor said to begin his remarks at the signing event.
These maps he has now signed into law were initially proposed by Evers in January as part of the Wisconsin Supreme Court-ordered remedial maps process, which came after its Dec. 22 ruling striking down previous maps, and eventually passed by the Republican-controlled Wisconsin State Legislature last week.
The governor’s signature on this bill puts an end to a fraught process and a difficult final decision (which we covered at length here), and puts the state on the path to be out from under the thumb of one of the most partisan gerrymanders in the nation.
This is a victory not for any one political party, but a victory for Wisconsin, for democracy, and for fair representation. The Gerrymander has divided Wisconsin for so many years. It has greatly limited competition in state legislative districts, making it tremendously difficult to hold legislators accountable by way of the ballot box. That part is over now.
I distinctly believe that the end of The Gerrymander in Wisconsin will make for a healthier political process in this state. That legislators having to compete and earn our votes instead of having them handed to them through an unfairly tilted map will bring about better representation across the political spectrum. That this will make legislators more responsive to their constituents, to majority public opinion on key issues, and more respectful and cooperative with each other as lawmakers. That this will bring about a genuine change to our truly toxic legislative branch.
And yet, many of the same people will still be there in the state legislature, of course, so this “new day” will still have many of the same old faces. Many of the same intractable problems will continue to exist. Fixing the deeply broken institution of the Wisconsin State Legislature after more than a decade under the control of Robin Vos and this group of state Republicans is going to take some time.
This new map — Wisconsin’s new map! — projects to put a Democratic majority in the State Assembly in play this year, but Republicans will probably still be favored to win there, and because only half of the State Senate will be on this year’s ballot, it won’t be until 2026 that a Democratic majority, and potential trifecta, will be a realistic possibility.
Still, the Assembly has not had fewer than 60 Republican-held seats out of the 99 total since The Gerrymander was installed more than 12 years ago, and this map projects to be much closer to 50-50. Republicans currently enjoy a supermajority in the State Senate. That will end soon, and the possibility of returning to one party holding two-thirds of the seats in this evenly divided purple state are slim to none. This in itself is a huge, huge shift with ramifications we’ve only scratched the surface of understanding.
Because this is not about giving one party an advantage over another, it’s about a map that reflects the voters of Wisconsin.
And while it is the hard work from so many for so long that should be commended for getting us here, it is the voters who made this monumental moment for the state of Wisconsin possible.
What just happened in Wisconsin is a tremendous example of how your vote can impact change. The state re-elected Tony Evers, flipped the state Supreme Court, and now, has ended the most egregious partisan gerrymander in the nation. Your votes made that happen.
Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 was a wake-up call for Democrats and for the left in Wisconsin. Discombobulated following that defeat, there was not even a challenger on the ballot in 2017 when right-wing justice Annette Ziegler was re-elected to a ten-year term. But since then, Democrats and Democratic-aligned candidates have won 15 of 18 statewide elections.
Of those were three elections between 2018 and 2023, each with double-digit margins of victory, that sent Rebecca Dallet (in 2018), Jill Karofsky (in 2020) and Janet Protasiewicz (in 2023) to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. It cannot be overstated just how much those victories have meant to the state.
The blue wave in 2018 had a high crest in Wisconsin, with Democrats sweeping statewide elections for attorney general, state treasurer, secretary of state, and most importantly, for governor. Tony Evers ousted Scott Walker by a less than 30,000-vote margin.
That ushered in an era of divided government, and Republicans hunkered down to obstruct the Democratic governor whenever they could in the legislature — and with the right-wing majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court as their firewall. They used the lame-duck session to strip powers from the new Democratic governor, and then once Evers’ term began, Republicans gaveled-in and gaveled-out of special session after special session, went nearly 300 days without passing a bill at a time of genuine crisis in 2020, denied a public hearing to more than 98% of bills introduced by Democrats during a two-year legislative session, and refused to confirm nearly 200 of the governor’s appointments to various state offices. Republicans could do these things and act this way because The Gerrymander made them so unaccountable to voters, it was more likely that Republicans would gain a two-thirds supermajority than Democrats could win a simple majority. Even as Democrats kept winning statewide elections, even flipping a few Assembly seats, Republicans in the legislature were still holding all the power in Wisconsin.
But not forever. Voters across the state were making their voices heard in election after election, and that Democratic winning streak continued on through Joe Biden’s victory in the state in 2020.
In May 2022, I wrote a column, published in partnership with Heartland Signal, saying that Wisconsin had the opportunity to restore its democracy within the next 12 months. Step one of that would be to re-elect Tony Evers as governor. That, of course, happened in November 2022, when Evers won by 3.5% over Republican Tim Michels. The next step was to win the open state Supreme Court race in the 2023 election.
You may recall our coverage of that race, from the first candidate forum to the February primary to our in-depth feature story on how this race could put an end to The Gerrymander and bring real checks and balances to Wisconsin. We even hosted an online Q&A with Julia Louis-Dreyfus about the race. It was a wild few months.
But that election has proven to be enormously consequential for Wisconsin, the final piece after an enormous amount of work for years and years and years that would, and now has, take down The Gerrymander.
A guest column we published last spring is one I’ve returned to in recent weeks. It was by Carlene Bechen of the Wisconsin Fair Maps Coalition — who was standing with the governor when he signed the bill on Monday morning — on how grassroots activists pushed the fair maps issue in Wisconsin.
“The gerrymandering issue, which is pivotal in this Supreme Court race, reached critical mass not by accident but by the amazing work of a group of activists and volunteers. This is a shout out to them: The people who campaign to bring about political and social change, and the people who give freely of their time and talents to serve the common good.”
Voting makes a difference. Sustained action from activists and volunteers and everyday people makes a difference. More than 13 years after the 2010 election forever altered the trajectory of this state, this victory now, in 2024, was made possible because people like you did the work and showed up and organized and voted in election after election after election. This happened because you voted, harder.
One day later, that work continues. The spring primary is Feb. 20, and people across the state will be voting for offices in their local government or their school board. Mayors and county executives and judges and comptrollers and more will be elected in the spring general election on April 2.
Then, for this fall’s general election cycle, Wisconsin’s state legislature will no longer have the unenviable distinction of being among the most gerrymandered in the nation. It will be conducting elections for 99 Assembly seats and 16 Senate seats on a new, fairer map that better reflects the people of Wisconsin.
It happened because you voted. Do not forget that. Do not discount that. Your vote is your voice and that vote is powerful.
Keep showing up in every election. We’re not even close to done yet, Wisconsin.
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 17 Milwaukee Press Club Excellence in Journalism Awards. He’s on Twitter at @DanRShafer.
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Great work Dan, and what a win for the state and for democracy.
Dan, I greatly appreciate your reporting on not only the gerrymandering, but what it meant in all the Legislative districts in the state. Thank you so very much for the in-depth and thoughtful reporting.