Tuesday, February 24, 2026
Thursday, July 31, 2025
Wednesday, November 6, 2024
Speaker Robin Vos says GOP will continue to 'set the agenda' after holding majorities
Laura Schulte
MADISON – Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said he's looking forward to Republicans continuing to "set the agenda" in the Wisconsin Legislature, despite Democrats flipping seats to their control Tuesday.
In a news conference alongside Assembly Majority Leader Tyler August, Vos said Wednesday that Republicans would likely hold on to their majority with 54 seats in the 99-member body.
More:2024 Wisconsin General Election Results
That number is down from 64 in the last session, with Democrats winning in 10 districts. Democrats also made pickups in the state Senate to bring the GOP majority to 18-15, down from 22-10.
"Now we get the chance to set the agenda for the rest of the state with our colleagues in the state Senate," Vos said.
Democrats fell short of flipping the Assembly in the first election since the state's legislative districts were redrawn, but did manage to narrow the majority Republicans have held for more than a decade. All of the Assembly seats were up for election, many of them with new candidates in the newly drawn districts.
Vos, who is planning to run for speaker again this session, said Democrats only took seats where they gained advantages through redrawn maps Democratic Gov. Tony Evers signed into law.
"We were able to win maps drawn by a federal court, a state court, by the legislature and by the Democrats," he said. "So we have won under every scenario that's possible, Democrats have only made gains when they have gerrymandered districts."
August echoed his sentiment.
"I believe if you were to ask most people in the state of Wisconsin if Assembly Republicans would be standing here today at 54 seats, given everything we were up against ― including a gerrymandered map that the governor instilled using his liberal allies on the state Supreme Court — that most people wouldn't believe it," August said. "But we believed we could be here the entire time, and our candidates believed in it too."
More:Donald Trump wins Wisconsin, propelling his return to the White House
The Republican Legislature adopted the maps in place now, saying at the time that the boundaries proposed by Evers were more favorable to Republicans than other options being considered by the state Supreme Court should the decision have gone to them.
The new maps replaced those that were widely regarded as heavily gerrymandered in favor of Republicans and leading to wide majorities for the party lasting more than a decade.
"On what was a tough night for Democrats nationwide, we made key gains in the State Legislature last night — demonstrating the power of the Republican gerrymander that crushed democracy in our state for more than a decade and the strength of Democratic state legislative efforts," Democratic Party of Wisconsin chairman Ben Wikler said in a statement.
More:Tammy Baldwin wins Wisconsin Senate race in 2024 election over Eric Hovde
Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer said in a statement said that things will change following the new Democratic members being elected.
"We have strong candidates from around the state joining the caucus. Fair maps have allowed voters to hold legislators accountable, and this will change how policy is written and what bills move through the legislature," she said. "I hope and expect that this shift will result in more collaboration and bipartisan work in the legislature, because that is what the people of Wisconsin have asked us to do."
In a call with reporters, Republican Party of Wisconsin chairman Brian Schimming said "Democrats spent the last couple weeks bragging about how they might be able to take over the state Assembly, and they didn't."
"Majorities matter in the Legislature. The Democrats don't have either of them," Schimming said. "The truth of the matter is they had their one moment when they had a huge turnout to take over this year, and they failed in both houses."
Schimming added the party is already looking forward to upcoming races for state Supreme Court, attorney general and governor. Liberals assumed the majority on the Supreme Court with the 2023 election of Justice Janet Protasiewicz.
The balance on the court is again up for grabs in 2025, with the retirement of liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley. Dane County Circuit Judge Susan Crawford, favored by liberals, and Waukesha County Circuit Judge Brad Schimel so far are in the race. Schimel is the former Republican attorney general of Wisconsin.
In the Senate, Democrats picked up four key seats in districts they heavily targeted. Races in the Senate attracted high levels of spending, especially in the 8th District, where Democrat Jodi Habush Sinykin defeated Sen. Duey Stroebel, R-Cedarburg. That race attracted more than $3 million in spending from the candidates, political parties and the campaigns.
Vos said according to estimations, there was an outsized amount of spending in Assembly races, as well. In the 21st District, covering a portion of the southern suburbs of Milwaukee, Rep. Jessie Rodriguez, R-Oak Creek, narrowly defeated the Democratic candidate David Marstellar in another high-spending race fueled by television advertising.
"We think that they probably spent between $3 and $4 million almost entirely on negative advertising, besmirching her record and lying about who she was and how she voted," he said.
In addition to the 8th, Democrats won in the 14th Senate District, where Sarah Keyeski defeated incumbent Republican Joan Ballweg; in the 30th Senate District where Democrat Jamie Wall defeated Republican Jim Rafter; and the 18th Senate District where Democrat Krisitin Alfheim defeated Republican Anthony Phillips.
Orientation for the new members of the Assembly will be held the week of December 9, and the new Legislature will begin its session in January.
Laura Schulte can be reached at leschulte@jrn.com and on X at @SchulteLaura.
Saturday, October 19, 2024
Monday, September 30, 2024
Bice: Tammy Baldwin raises campaign funds from food companies while ripping price gouging
Daniel Bice
Sen. Tammy Baldwin has been an outspoken voice in favor of cracking down on corporate price gouging and consumer product shrinkflation.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, may even have borrowed some of those ideas.
Yet despite these efforts, Baldwin, a second-term Democrat, has collected $33,500 in campaign cash from major food and consumer product companies over the years, including $12,000 this year. She is running for re-election against Republican candidate Eric Hovde.
Indeed, since announcing her latest plan in February to hold down costs on consumer goods, Baldwin has accepted $4,000 from General Mills' political action committee and $1,000 from Hershey's PAC.
General Mills came under criticism last year from U.S. Sen. Bob Casey for hiking its prices five times in 2021 and 2022. The Hershey Co. reduced the size of such products as Dot's Pretzels and Hershey's Kisses in the past.
Zach Bannon, a spokesman for Hovde, accused Baldwin of duplicity for, in effect, saying one thing about price gouging in the Senate and doing another with her campaign fund.
“Sen. Baldwin’s lack of understanding of the economy is only outmatched by her hypocrisy," Bannon said. "After living in D.C. for 26 years, and now spending most of her time in New York City with her Wall Street partner, her commitment to the people of Wisconsin is secondary to her personal gain."
A spokesman for Baldwin pushed back on the criticism.
"Tammy Baldwin will stand up to anyone on behalf of Wisconsin families," said Andrew Mamo, spokesman for Baldwin's campaign. "She is proud to fight corporate price gouging so everyone in Wisconsin can afford to live a good life in our great state."
Baldwin began raising concerns about price gouging in 2022 when she joined other Democrats in sponsoring federal legislation to authorize the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general to enforce a federal ban against excessive price increases.
The Democrats accused large corporations of using the pandemic to boost prices and collect record profits.
The measure did not pass.
Records show Baldwin has received $19,000 from food and snack companies since cosponsoring that legislation. That includes PACs run by Conagra Brands, the Snack Food Association, the Kraft-Heinz Co., Archer Daniels Midland, General Mills and Hershey's.
In February, Baldwin joined other Democrats in reintroducing the measure this term, saying large corporations were using inflation and supply-chain disruptions to justify raising the cost of consumer goods.
harris"Big corporations are price gouging Americans, taking in record profits, and giving their executives lavish bonuses, all while Wisconsin families struggle to get by," Baldwin said in a news release. "It’s wrong and we need to do more to hold these big corporations accountable and give Wisconsinites some breathing room."
The same month, Baldwin also backed a bill aimed at stopping shrinkflation, the practice of reducing the size of products without lowering the prices. The measure would direct the FTC to draft regulations declaring shrinkflation a deceptive act and give state and federal officials the power to take civil action against manufacturers who do this.
Interestingly, Baldwin criticized General Mills in a news release for trimming the “family size” of Cocoa Puffs cereal from 19.3 ounces to 18.1 ounces while charging the same price. Over the years, General Mills' PAC has donated $15,000 to Baldwin's campaign.
Baldwin officials said her legislation shows her Senate work is not influenced by campaign donations.
These proposals gained national attention when Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, announced she would authorize the first-ever federal ban on corporate price gouging on food and groceries if elected.
Harris' plan came under immediate criticism. Her Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, and other Republicans accused Harris of pushing "communist-style price controls." Her proposal has also alarmed food industry officials and even some left-of-center economists, who’ve warned such policies can hurt more than they help.
Among other things, critics have said, price gouging does not cause inflation and such a proposal could be harmful to supermarkets, which operate on narrow profit margins.
"This is not sensible policy, and I think the biggest hope is that it ends up being a lot of rhetoric and no reality," Jason Furman, a top economist in the Democratic President Barack Obama's administration, told the New York Times. "There’s no upside here, and there is some downside."
But Baldwin has not backed down from her proposals.
In a recent piece in the Journal Sentinel, she said "greedflation" — the practice of raising prices on consumers while inflation is high to pad a corporation’s bottom line — continues to be a major problem.
From 2020 to 2022, Baldwin said, core inflation rose but corporate profits soared by 75%, five times faster than inflation. She said grocery store price hikes are largely due to corporate greed.
Baldwin wrote: "I’m proud to be helping lead the Price Gouging Prevention Act, which would ban this price gouging and put a cop on the beat to hold corporations accountable for their greedy profit-over-people practices."
Contact Daniel Bice at (414) 313-6684 or dbice@jrn.com. Follow him on X at @DanielBice or on Facebook at fb.me/daniel.bice.
Tuesday, July 28, 2020
Two women arrested in beating of state Sen. Tim Carpenter during night of protests in Madison
Wednesday, June 24, 2020
Sen. Van Wanggaard: 'this isn’t about protesting anymore'
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| Wisconsin State Sen. Van Wanggaard |
RACINE — Wisconsin State Sen. Van Wanggaard, R-Racine, has released a statement regarding the protests and riots in Madison last night — and he is not happy.
“Forgive my language, but I don’t care about being 'senatorial' anymore. The time for platitudes is over. This is bullshit," he said in the statement.
“The role of police is to protect life first, property second. Last night in Madison, Madison police did neither. An innocent bystander, a state senator who has largely stood with the BLM movement, was attacked for watching and taking a picture."
Wanggaard was referring to State Sen. Tim Carpenter, D-Milwaukee, who Wanggaard said he will be praying for. Carpenter was punched as he was en route to the Capitol to get some work done late Tuesday evening and stopped to take a photo of the riots.
But that's not all Wanggaard was upset about.
“The statue of a Civil War hero who literally gave his life freeing slaves was beheaded. A statue representing women’s rights was torn down. There was destruction at the Capitol and an attempt to start the City/County building of the most liberal city and county in Wisconsin on fire," he said. “This isn’t about protesting anymore. This is about mindless violence and destruction."
"Someone in Madison city government should be held accountable, because what happened last night shouldn’t be allowed to happen in any city, much less Wisconsin’s capital city. Arrests need to be made."
Wanggaard said Madison is "incapable of protecting life or property" and officials don't have control of their streets.
He said he calls on Gov. Tony Evers to work with the Legislature and Supreme Court to ensure the Capitol will be safe for building workers when it reopens in July. He also wanted the National Guard involved, sending the message that violence is not acceptable.
"Let Madison police protect life if they are still allowed. The National Guard can protect state property. What occurred last night cannot occur again – and definitely not in the building," Wanggaard said.
Read more: https://journaltimes.com/news/local/sen-van-wanggaard-this-isn-t-about-protesting-anymore/article_717ceb5f-27c3-503f-aa4b-8d1247834a6b.html#tracking-source=home-top-story-1
Protesters attack Wisconsin state senator in chaotic night at capitol: report
I took this pic- it got me assaulted & beat up. Punched/kicked in the head, neck, ribs. Maybe concussion, socked in left eye is little blurry, sore neck & ribs. 8-10 people attacked me. Innocent people are going to get killed. Capitol locked- stuck in office.Stop violence nowPlz!
Friday, April 10, 2020
2 GOP senators warn of 'revolt' and 'civil disobedience' against stay-at-home order. Evers calls rhetoric 'not helpful.'
Molly Beck, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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| GOP Sens. Steve Nass, left, of Whitewater and Duey Stroebel, right, of Cedarburg. (Photo: Journal Sentinel files) |
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