The Recombobulation Area is a thirteen-time Milwaukee Press Club award–winning weekly opinion column and online publication founded by longtime Milwaukee journalist Dan Shafer. The Recombobulation Area is now part of Civic Media.
As we get closer and closer to Election Day on Nov. 5, the state of play for elections happening in the Wisconsin State Legislature continues to evolve.
With new maps this year, it’s a whole new ballgame. The era of entrenched Republican control, with Democrats only having a realistic opportunity to chip away at the margins, is over. But while starting fresh like this can bring about a host of new opportunities, many of the same dynamics are still factoring heavily in these races.
Namely, money. The fundraising component of these races is always important, and while toss-up races at the top of the ticket draw whopping sums of money well into the hundreds of millions, the impact that one or two million dollars can have in these races is massive.
Last week, WisPolitics reported that Republican political donors Diane Hendricks and Liz Uihlein combined to give more than $6 million to the Republican Assembly Campaign Committee (RACC) and the Committee to Elect a Republican Senate (CERS). These donations, WisPolitics notes, puts Republicans ahead of Democrats in overall direct fundraising for the state legislature.
There are individual contributions to certain candidates, too, and in some of those areas, Democrats are doing better. And there are many independent expenditure groups spending heavily in Wisconsin this year, with the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign just reporting that these groups have already set a record for outside spending in legislative races, with more than $8.9 million.
But these donations, and the raft of cash from Hendricks and Uihlein in particular, are having an impact on this race.
CNalysis, the forecasting site we’ve used for one of the key datapoints in in our 2024 Wisconsin Legislature Voter Guide, shifted projections for several Assembly races, all in favor of Republicans. Those races include:
Of these, the 21st, 53rd and 89th were already in our “Toss-Up” category, and the 53rd looks to be the closest in our “Close Races” category (which is meant to indicate that there is a favorite on one side of the race, not a true “toss-up”). So, some of this isn’t all that surprising. But the larger trend shows that the race for the majority is shifting in favor of the Republican Party in this fight for 50 seats in the Assembly.
With this latest information, the odds of Republicans remaining in the majority are going up. Democrats still do have a chance to flip the Assembly — and it’s the best chance they’ve had since 2008 — but the GOP is even more likely now to win some of these key races. I said before that I thought Republicans had about a 60% chance to win the majority in the Assembly, and I’d bump that up to 65% now. However, the party in power will still come down to toss-up races.
On the Senate side, Democrats are faring slightly better. Confident in two races — Senate District 18 in the Fox Valley and Senate District 32 in La Crosse and western Wisconsin — they even dropped ad buys with clear advantages shaping up in both, shifting those funds to other, tighter races.
The focus for the Senate is shifting to three races — the three in the “Toss Up” category in our Voter Guide. Of those three, the race in Senate District 30 in the Green Bay and Brown County area, with Democrat Jamie Wall facing Republican Jim Rafter, looks to be moving in favor of the Democrat, as Wall has proven to be a strong fundraiser in the district. Of the three toss-up races, that seems the most likely to be flipped Democratic.
The Senate is highly unlikely to be flipped this year. With only half of the upper chamber on the ballot this year, the more realistic path for Democrats to win the majority there is in 2026, but they will need to pick up seats to do so. They appear to be on track for that in the two seats in the Fox Valley and Green Bay areas, but others could go either way.
This year, though, the Assembly is in play. But after the huge donations from Hendricks, the owner of Beloit-based ABC Supply, and Uihlein, the co-founder of Pleasant Prairie-based Uline — who, along with her husband Richard Uihlein, are the third biggest political donors of this cycle, pouring in more than $75 million to back Trump and attack Tammy Baldwin — Republicans are the favorites to remain in the majority.
Dan Shafer is a journalist from Milwaukee who writes and publishes The Recombobulation Area. In 2024, he became the Political Editor of Civic Media. 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 18 Milwaukee Press Club Excellence in Journalism Awards. He’s on Twitter at @DanRShafer.
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