Wisconsin State Capitol (Wisconsin Examiner photo)
Control of the Wisconsin State Senate is unlikely to change this year even with new legislative maps in place, as only half of the seats are up for election. However, a handful of the Senate races will be key to determining how much the current 22-seat Republican supermajority changes and will set the stage for either Republicans or Democrats to win the majority in the 2026 election cycle.
Wisconsin’s state legislative races are the most competitive they’ve been in over a decade due to the new legislative maps that were adopted in February after the state Supreme Court ruled the old maps were an unconstitutional gerrymander. Democrats are running candidates in all 16 Senate seats up for election, while Republicans are running in 11 districts. Senators serve for four-year terms and make a salary of $57,000 per year.
With just over two weeks until Election Day, the Wisconsin Examiner took a look at four state Senate races, which are among the most competitive, happening across the state.
Senate District 8
The race for Senate District 8 pits Republican Sen. Duey Stroebel against Democrat Jodi Habush Sinykin, an attorney and environmental advocate from Whitefish Bay. The district sits north of Milwaukee and includes Whitefish Bay, Fox Point, Bayside, River Hills, Menomonee Falls, Germantown, Mequon, Cedarburg, Grafton and Port Washington.
An analysis by John Johnson, a fellow at Marquette Law School, shows the seat has a 53% Republican lean when compared to 2022 election results. CN Analysis rates the race a toss-up.
Stroebel was first elected to the state Senate in a 2015 special election after serving four years in the Assembly. In his last two elections, he faced no opposition in either the primary or the general election.
If elected, it would be Habush Sinykin’s first time holding public office. She ran an unsuccessful but close campaign for the state Senate last year in a 2023 special election against Sen. Dan Knodl. With the new maps, Knodl decided to run for the Assembly this year to avoid running against Stroebel, who currently represents Senate District 20 under the old maps.
It is already one of the most expensive legislative races in state history with close to $2 million in spending as of October.
Democrats in the race have sought to highlight reproductive health — and Stroebel’s record on the issue.
“Couples across Wisconsin are worried whether they will have the availability of IVF in the future. Doctors are worried about whether they could provide life-saving care to patients under Republican abortion bans… Students considering Health Care careers worry about the possibility of not being able to safely practice without threat of prosecution and women worry about whether or not they will be able to make decisions about their own bodies,” Habush Sinkykin said at a recent roundtable event. “I am running to help alleviate these worries and to secure reproductive freedoms across the state.”
Democrat Jodi Habush Sinykin in 2023. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner)
Habush Sinykin has been critical of Stroebel’s past record on abortion and other reproductive health issues, pointing to his cosponsorship of a failed proposed amendment in 2019 that would have included fetal personhood in the state constitution.
The amendment would give embryos the same rights as pregnant women, she said. “This is important because, as we heard and saw in Alabama, this would deprive women and families of opportunities for IVF here in Wisconsin,” Habush Sinykin said.
Stroebel was also the only senator to vote against a bill that would have expanded postpartum Medicaid coverage. He, along with other Republicans senators, also rejected Democrats’ attempts to bring a bill to the floor that would have implemented protections for contraception and fertility treatments.
Stroebel’s campaign recently sent a cease and desist order to Habush Sinykin’s campaign because of an ad, which accused the lawmakers of voting to end IVF.
“I have never voted to restrict access to IVF, and I never will. Any assertion otherwise is a lie,” Stroebel said in a statement.
Habush Sinykin’s campaign has stood by the statement.
Stroebel, meanwhile, is seeking to place his work in the Senate at the centerpiece of his campaign. He has served on the powerful Joint Finance Committee since 2019, and has recently helped advocate for the passage of a massive expansion of Wisconsin’s school choice program, a new literacy law that changes how reading is taught in the state and repealing the personal property tax, which was included in Act 12.
Stroebel said during an interview on the Political Power Hour on 620 WTMJ that inflation is the issue that he is discussing the most with voters at their doors. He said that he has knocked over 25,000 doors this election year.
“The cost of living is really crushing people. I mean, we’re talking about people on fixed incomes, we’re talking about retired people, we’re talking about young families,” Stroebel said. “We, as government, can do a lot more to help that situation out.”
Stroebel said that the state’s budget surplus should be given back to taxpayers. The most recent report from the Department of Administration found that the state ended its 2024 fiscal year with a $4.6 billion state budget surplus — outpacing previous projections. He noted that the Legislature sent Gov. Tony Evers several tax cut proposals — many of which were vetoed.
Stroebel said he supports a “middle class tax cut” — meaning one that wouldn’t touch the state’s highest tax bracket and would also focus on taxes on retirement income.
Habush Sinykin said in an interview with WisEye that the state’s budget surplus needs to be used to invest in Wisconsin’s K-12 schools, including increases to per-pupil and special education funding, and the university system as well as workforce development. She has said that tax cuts should be targeted towards working families and retirees.
Senate District 14
Republican incumbent Joan Ballweg and Democrat Sarah Keyeski, a mental health provider, are running against each other in the race for Senate District 14. The district sits north of Madison and covers parts of Dane, Columbia, Sauk and Richland counties, including the cities of Deforest, Reedsburg, Baraboo, Lodi, Columbus, Portage, Richland Center and Wisconsin Dells.
An analysis by Marquette Law School showed that the seat is a 53.3% Democratic lean. CN Analysis rates the district as ‘Tilt .’
Ballweg has served in the Assembly from 2004 to 2018 and was elected to the Senate in 2020. During her time in the Legislature, she has served in leadership positions, including currently as majority caucus vice-chair and is also a member of the Joint Finance Committee. She also previously served as the mayor of Markesan.
Under the new maps, Markesan was drawn into the new 13th Senate District, which is represented by Sen. John Jagler (R-Watertown). Ballweg has said she now lives in Pardeeville.
Keyeski is a mental health provider from Lodi, and a political newcomer.
Reproductive health care is again one of the issues at the center of the race. At a candidate forum hosted by Lodi Optimists Club last week, both candidates were asked whether they would vote to “protect women’s reproductive health” by putting legal abortion into law.
Keyeski, who supports codifying Roe v. Wade protections into law, said people have the right to make choices over their own bodies. Ballweg, meanwhile, sought to focus on other parts of reproductive health care, rather than abortion.
Sen. Joan Ballweg. Official legislative portrait.
“Before you get to the abortion, first of all, I totally agree that women should be participating or using whatever type of contraception processes that they are comfortable with… in consultation with their doctors, of course,” Ballweg said.
Many Republican candidates at the state and federal levels have stepped back from restrictive abortion positions this election cycle. A recent poll found that most Wisconsinites oppose criminalizing abortion.
Ballweg has previously talked about her opposition to abortion.
According to the Ripon Commonwealth Press, Ballweg explained that she was anti-abortion at a listening session in 2022 and she didn’t think that the 1849 law, which stopped abortion care in Wisconsin for over a year, should be changed to include exceptions for rape and incest.
“I believe that life begins at conception. … Even if it is started in a very terrible way, that’s still life,” Ballweg said. “… If a woman is raped and it results in a pregnancy, that person who raped her was terrible, but she wasn’t.”
“I believe there are options. … She has the choice to love that child and keep that child with her, or she can leave that baby at the hospital, walk out the door and that baby will be taken care of.”
In an interview with WisEye, Ballweg said the issue isn’t currently the responsibility of the Legislature. The Wisconsin Supreme Court has accepted two cases filed by Attorney General Josh Kaul and Planned Parenthood that will determine if Wisconsinites have a right to abortion care.
“I expect that we’ll be getting an answer from them in the not too distant future, so it’s out of the Legislature’s hands at this point,” Ballweg said. When asked again about whether she has a position on whether abortion should be limited after a certain number of weeks, Ballweg noted that she supported a 20-week limit a couple of years ago.
Ballweg has said one of her top priorities if reelected would be to help pass a bill to extend postpartum Medicaid coverage to a year. Wisconsin is one of two states that hasn’t accepted it. She was the lead Senate author on a bill that would have done this last year, but it never received a vote in the Assembly.
“It’s important that we have mom there for our youngest Wisconsinites, so that mom and baby can be healthy together,” Ballweg said in an interview with WisconsinEye.
Keyeski, meanwhile, has said she supports full Medicaid expansion. Wisconsin is one of 10 states that haven’t accepted the federal Medicaid expansion. Medicaid eligibility, under the expansion, would be extended to adults under age 65 with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty level.
“Approximately 90,000 people, if we expanded Medicaid, would have better access to care and that’s really important. One of the things that’s also really important about expanding this is that our rural communities really depend on our small clinics, our small hospitals, really depend on Medicaid money,” Keyeski said at the forum. “Many of our rural communities have people that are on Medicaid and so that is what keeps those smaller hospitals and clinics viable. We’ve seen some having to close down now in the Eau Claire area Chippewa Falls area, and that is a travesty and that could have been somewhat helped by having this Medicaid expansion.”
Democratic candidate Sarah Keyeski, a mental health professional from Lodi, speaks at a forum hosted by Main Street Alliance, the Wisconsin Farmers Union and Wisconsin Early Education. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner)
Education funding has also represented a key issue in the race. The focus comes as more than 100 school districts across the state will go to voters to ask for additional funding in November.
Keyeski has said that she wants additional state funding to go towards public schools across Wisconsin, including by increasing special education funding.
“We need to change the school funding formula, so that we have more money coming toward our schools,” Keyeski said at the forum, noting that the state has a significant budget surplus.
Keyeski has also said she doesn’t believe that private schools should receive public funding.
Ballweg also said she supports increasing special education funding.
“We’re at about 33% of coverage right now. School districts can have a problem if they have one or two really difficult cases, and we do some things for those high cost special needs students also, but in general, the No. 1 stressor on our school districts is filling the need for special needs kids, so yes, keep making sure that we increase that,” Ballweg said during the WisEye interview.
Senate District 30
Republican Jim Rafter and Democrat Jamie Wall are running against each other in the race for the newly created 30th Senate District, which covers Green Bay, Ashwaubenon, De Pere, Allouez, Bellevue.
The district has a 52.6% Democratic lean, according to the Marquette Law School analysis. CN Analysis rates the race as “Lean D.”
Democrat Jamie Wall at the
Democratic Party of Brown County office. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner)
Wall is a business consultant from Green Bay. He helped create New North, an economic development organization that seeks to promote business growth in Brown County and northeast Wisconsin. He ran for public office once before in 2012 for Wisconsin’s 8th Congressional District seat, losing to former U.S. Rep. Reid Ribble 55% to 44%.
Wall said Wisconsin’s new maps are a major reason he felt he could step into the race this year. The new maps placed three lawmakers in the 30th Senate District together. Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Green Bay), who is the current incumbent, decided to move to another district because of the new maps under, while the other lawmakers are leaving the Senate.
“I wouldn’t have bothered under the old system, since that would have been a fool’s errand,” Wall said in an interview. “The Green Bay Metro here was kind of the poster child for the old gerrymander.”
Wall said he hasn’t been happy with the direction of the Legislature for the last 15 years.
“They made it so it was illegal for them not to be in power and they got to be their bad selves. They didn’t have to think about the voter in the middle… They could just go straight down the far right side of the highway and only worry about their primary voters… I don’t think it was good for the state,” Wall said.
Wall said the costs of housing, health care and child care are three of the issues that he would want to work to help address.
“We need to take a hard look at barriers to building more houses and not just houses, but apartments, condos, duplexes, to increase the housing supply,” Wall said. He said more could also be done with programs that the Wisconsin Economic Development Association (WEDA) has to help first-time home buyers afford down payments and their first mortgage.
When it comes to health care, Wall said he supports Medicaid expansion and would also want to have conversations about ways of streamlining and making care more efficient, though he said that doesn’t mean depriving people of care.
Rafter said in a WisEye interview that he is running for the Senate so that he can help bring people together to work towards finding solutions to issues facing Wisconsinites. He said that his experience as village president would help him do this.
Jim Rafter. Photo courtesy of campaign.
His campaign did not respond to an interview request from the Examiner.
Rafter said his top priority in the Legislature would be to work on bills that would help with the cost of living including the cost of housing, food, clothing, child care. One potential bill to do this would be a tax cut bill. He said that most, if not all, of the budget surplus needs to go back to taxpayers.
“The state of Wisconsin has overcharged or overtaxed its citizens,” Rafter said. “We’ve got to figure out how not to do that.”
Wall has said that when it comes to the budget surplus he would also support some tax relief.
“The state’s running record surpluses and we should give some of that money back to the people who need it to help them at a time where many people rightly feel a little bit pinched,” Wall said. He said he liked Evers’ middle class tax cut proposal for the 2023 budget, which was rejected by Republican lawmakers.
Rafter said that there need to be conversations about increasing funding to schools, and he noted that Green Bay is one of the schools going to referendum.
Senate District 18
Democrat Kris Alfheim and Republican Anthony Phillips are running against each other in the race for the 18th Senate District in the Fox Valley, including Appleton, Menasha, Neenah and Oshkosh.
The open district has a 55.5% Democratic lean, according to the Marquette Law School analysis. The current 18th Senate District incumbent Sen. Dan Feyen (R-Fond du Lac) was drawn into the 20th Senate District under the new maps.
Alfheim has served on the Appleton Common Council since 2020. She previously ran a campaign for the state Senate in 2022, losing to Sen. Rachael Cabral Guevara (R-Appleton) 54% to 45.9%.
Kris Alfheim, a member of the Appleton Common Council, is running for the 18th Senate District against Republican Anthony Phillips, a cancer physician who wants to keep the district red. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner)
Alfheim has said that she is running for the Senate on the “simple idea” that “people in Wisconsin like me are tired of the bickering, of the gridlock, of the dysfunction and are ready to actually get things done.”
Alfheim has said that, if elected, she will be a “pragmatic” legislator . One of her goals is using the state’s budget surplus to invest in schools and municipalities.
The best way the state can help lower taxes is to invest in local needs, Alfheim said during an interview with WisEye. “When you hold back revenue from the state, to our school systems, to our municipalities, that forces the school systems and the municipalities to then raise taxes. The best way to control those rising costs are to actually fund the systems that we account for on a regular basis.”
Phillips, a cancer physician in the Fox Valley, is a political newcomer. He has said that he wants to help keep the district in Republican hands and has described himself as a “right-center” candidate. His priorities for office include keeping law enforcement funded, income and property taxes low, bolstering parental oversight of education and ensuring families have access to health care.
Anthony Phillips. (Photo courtesy of Phillips)
Phillips has made transgender issues a focal point of his campaign. In his campaign announcement, he highlighted Evers’ veto of a bill that would have barred transgender girls from participating on girls athletic teams. The issue also came up in a primary debate where Phillips talked about Alfheim.
[Alfheim has] “got to normalize this crazy notion of biological males playing girls’ sports,” Phillips said during the debate.
Alfheim is a member of the LGTBQ+ community, and a spotlight candidate for the LGTBQ+ Victory Fund, which is a political action committee dedicated to growing the number of out LGBTQ+ public officials in the U.S.
Democrats have also highlighted abortion and reproductive health issues in the race. Alfheim has said that she wants to work towards restoring women’s access to reproductive health care. Phillips, meanwhile, lists “advocating for a culture of Life to protect the lives of the unborn” as one of the issues that matter to him, and has previously said he would support a referendum on abortion restrictions, and believes people would favor some level of restriction on abortion access.
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