Zac Schultz on Wisconsin's 2024 Vote Results, 2025 Prospects

Frederica Freyberg:
Even as Tammy Baldwin made her victory speech two days after the election, Eric Hovde demurred on conceding. Zac Schultz joins us now from the Capitol with more on this and a look at legislative races. Hey, Zac.

Zac Schultz:
Hello, Fred.

Frederica Freyberg:
So for his part, Eric Hovde blames a third-party candidate on his loss. What is that about?

Zac Schultz:
Well, I’m sure for most of our viewers, this will be the first time they’ve heard of Thomas Leager. He really came out of nowhere. He doesn’t have any party. He didn’t really come as attached to run any ads or anything like that. But his name did appear on the ballot, and he did receive a significant number of votes for a third-party candidate. And it becomes more significant when you have a tighter race. However, even Brian Schimming, chairman of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, said it’s incumbent on their candidate to let voters know who is the real Republican in the race and this isn’t the first time that third party candidates have played spoiler. The third-party candidates in the presidential race took a significant number of votes. In 2016, Democrats blamed Jill Stein and the Green Party for taking a significant number of votes away from Hillary Clinton. A lot of these cases, it’s simply people deciding to raise a protest vote. And when they’re voting third party, especially if they don’t know who the actual candidate is. And in fact, if Hovde had just ran closer to Trump, then perhaps he would have come out ahead of Baldwin. But he’s blaming it on a third-party candidate at this point.

Frederica Freyberg:
So meanwhile, new voting maps allowed a switch from the current 22 to 11 Republican majority in the state Senate to an election pickup of four seats for Democrats, narrowing the Republican majority in that chamber to 18 to 15. What are the implications of that?

Zac Schultz:
Well, it’s pretty big in the Senate. Republicans had a supermajority, which means they had the ability to constitutionally impeach people. We’ve seen them do that in the past. They refused to seat any of Governor Evers’ appointees and rejected quite a few of them. So with that large of a power imbalance in the state Senate, Republicans could do whatever they wanted. With a much more narrow majority, not only did they lose two incumbents, which is pretty significant. Duey Stroebel sits on Joint Finance and he was a big conservative figurehead in that party. And knocking him off is a pretty big accomplishment for Democrats. And just the implications of them running ahead and against these Republican headwinds that came everywhere else. These were four swing seats that they won and picked up in this race. And in prior years where we’ve seen a red wave election so to speak, 2010, 2014, Democrats down ballot were getting crushed. So the Democrats are, rightfully so, saying they did a really big job of winning these seats and putting themselves in position to possibly challenge for the majority in the Senate in 2026.

Frederica Freyberg:
So in the Assembly, the current Republican majority is 64 to 35, and Democrats picked up ten seats in that chamber, bringing their majority down to 54 to 45. Now that’s a smaller gain, but still potentially predictive for 2026.

Zac Schultz:
Well, it’s significant in a lot of ways, not — in the Assembly, Republicans were only two seats short of a supermajority, which meant in the last session, Democrats had to have every member there every session day, because if they shrunk their amount, then that reduced what the Republicans needed to possibly override some of Governor Evers’ vetoes. That threat is gone in this next session. And once again, it puts Democrats in position to challenge for the majorities in ’26. And most importantly, we should see shifts in what it means over the next two years of governing in this state. I don’t think anyone’s going to predict that Republicans and Governor Evers are suddenly going to have a great relationship. But every vote that these Republicans take, they’re going to have to think about their vulnerable members and what it might mean back in their district in the next election. In years and sessions past, Robin Vos, for example, the Assembly Speaker, has let some of his more vulnerable Republicans vote ‘no’ against some Republican legislation because it didn’t matter if it passed with 64 or 60 votes, it mattered that it passed. This time around with only a 54-seat majority, if he can’t let that many of these vulnerable members take really damaging votes. So you might see a shift in what actually comes to the floor over the next two years.

Frederica Freyberg:
Meanwhile, we’re also just around the corner from a state Supreme Court spring election on April 1st. What are the stakes in that race?

Zac Schultz:
Well, every time we have an election in Wisconsin, people say it’s the most important election of your lifetime. And they’ll be saying that about this one again. Right now, the Supreme Court has a 4 to 3 liberal majority. The justice that is retiring is Justice Ann Walsh Bradley. She is part of that liberal majority. So with her out, it’s three-three. Whoever wins this, whether it’s a conservative candidate or a liberal candidate, will decide the makeup of the majority for the foreseeable future. So it actually is quite significant. Last time around with Janet Protasiewicz, we saw record national level spending. We’re probably going to see that again. That’s coming up in April. So people who thought the political ads were gone from their television, you may get a couple months off, but the ads are coming back and they’re going to come back in a big way.

Frederica Freyberg:
So the current liberal majority court is hearing oral arguments on Monday in the lawsuit over abortion in Wisconsin. What will that be deciding?

Zac Schultz:
Well, it will be deciding how we handle abortion in Wisconsin. Currently, the 1849 law that handles and regulates abortion in Wisconsin has been put on hold by a Dane County judge. So the Supreme Court is reviewing whether that’s appropriate. Whether abortion laws that have been passed since 1849 supersede and override that. And so we’re kind of in a Roe environment as far as what that matters. But they’ll also, at the same time, be deciding if there is a constitutional right to abortion health care in Wisconsin. So they could go either way. And as for what we should expect next Monday, there’s going to be increased security in the Capitol. We’ve already been told people will have to pass through metal detectors to get into the chamber. They’re expecting protesters. It’s also Veterans Day and we’ve been told in the middle of oral arguments, we can expect to hear a 21-gun salute for Veterans Day programing. So there will be a lot going on. The bigger question, especially tying it back to that election that we were just talking about, is when this decision might be released. Does it come down before that April Supreme Court election impacting it that way, or will it be released after that election so that we don’t know the fate of abortion rights in Wisconsin leading into that election next year?

Frederica Freyberg:
All right, Zac Schultz, thanks very much. A lot of information. Appreciate it.

Zac Schultz:
Thanks, Fred.