Do newly competitive legislative races in Wisconsin drive civic engagement?

A look at the Assembly contest between incumbent Todd Novak and challenger Elizabeth Grabe

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Five-term Republican Assembly member Todd Novak is fighting for his political life: His new southwest Wisconsin district includes more Democrats. Turnout, even in down-ballot races like those for the Assembly, soars in presidential election years. Democrats and their third-party friends are poised to spend heavily to retire Novak.

“I’m targeted,” Novak concedes.

But he’s been targeted before. He won his first Assembly race in 2014 by only 65 votes; his 2018 race by 332 votes. His victory margin two years ago over Democrat Leah Spicer jumped to 3,214 votes.

Novak’s old Assembly district included parts of Iowa, Richland, Sauk and Green counties — largely rural areas. The new Assembly District 51 lost chunks of Richland and Green counties, but gained Mount Horeb in Dane County, where voters choose Democrats by a two-to-one margin. It also for the first time includes all of Iowa County, which voted for Democrats for president in the 2016 and 2020 elections.

It now stretches from Madison-area suburbs in Dane County in the east to the dairy farms of Lafayette County in the west. Democrats win top-of-the-ticket races in the district’s three largest cities — Mount Horeb, Dodgeville — where Novak’s 12 years as mayor ended in April — and Mineral Point.

Novak’s Democratic opponent is Elizabeth Grabe, a real-estate agent and first-time candidate who returned to Mount Horeb from Miami, Florida, in 2005 to run the family farm. Grabe says she agreed to run after being shown numbers showing that a Democrat’s odds of winning went up significantly in the new district.

The new Assembly District 51 was drawn earlier this year as part of a bitter compromise between Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Republicans who have controlled the Legislature since 2011. Republican legislators accepted legislative maps submitted by Evers, fearing maps drawn by the state Supreme Court, which now has a liberal majority, would treat them much worse.

Voter turnout jumps in presidential election years, and this has been true in District 51, going up 25% between 2018 and 2020 and by 31% between 2014 and 2016. 

All this explains why the state Democratic Party has put a Nov. 5 target on Novak.

Novak concedes that the new district is “more Democratic,” but only slightly and adds, “65% to 70% of the new district is my old district, so they know me.” But Marquette University research says the district is 47% new and that “district performance,” based on 2022 top-of-the-ticket results, is 55.2% Democratic.

Theoretically a newly competitive district would mean that the candidates, including the incumbent, would need to campaign harder and engage more with voters, especially the ones who are new to the district. Theoretically, as well, a newly competitive district would energize the political parties behind the candidates as well as community members interested in issues that affect their pocketbooks and everyday lives. 

Is this happening in the District 51 race for state Assembly? Our multimedia team, a collaboration between Isthmus and WORT-FM, set out to answer that question.

Novak was raised on a dairy farm in the Iowa County village of Cobb and worked as a reporter and associate editor of the Dodgeville Chronicle until he ran for the Assembly in 2014. It was an open seat because then-Rep. Howard Marklein was running for the state Senate. Novak's career in government began when he was elected Dodgeville mayor in 2012. 

Novak, 59, is not reinventing himself for the new district. His low-profile campaign style has won five times, after all.

“This race is no different to me than how I handled the last five,” says Novak in a phone interview (the candidate did not respond to requests for in-person interviews in his district). “In my mind, I always run like I’m the underdog. This race is no different. That’s what drives me.”

He says he’s knocking on doors, introducing himself, listening and reminding voters that he’s on their Nov. 5 ballot “six days a week, minimum of four hours a day, but I usually put in more.”

The district includes “a lot of small villages,” each of which can take him a day or two to make the rounds. In rural areas, a campaign staffer drives him: “It’s easier than driving yourself and getting in and out” of a vehicle, he explains.

And he’s doing all the local fairs. His Facebook account includes pictures from these events, including the Lafayette County Fair, where he bought a sheep.

In past elections he declined to participate in candidates’ debates or forums. He is staying that course, refusing to participate in a Sept. 16 forum organized by a local business group, even though his challenger will appear. Novak would not say why he won’t do the forum. 

He is also distancing himself from an issue that just last year he would have been in the thick of: The former Dodgeville mayor won’t say how he will vote on a school district referendum on the November ballot asking residents of the city to raise their property taxes by $2.9 million to cover a budget gap.

Grabe has made public education funding an issue in the race, accusing Novak and his Republican colleagues of not providing schools enough state aid. There are 139 school district ballot referendums, including Dodgeville’s, on the November ballot, according to the Department of Public Instruction. 

But Novak blames instead the “perfect storm” of inflation and declining enrollment that he says is squeezing public schools in southwest Wisconsin, since the state’s school-aid formula is based on fall student counts. Federal anti-COVID aid that bailed out districts over the last three years is also running out. 

Novak says he tells voters he’s a “middle of the road” legislator who has voted against past Republican-crafted state budgets that didn’t spend enough on schools and provided public subsidies for new facilities for pro sports teams like the Milwaukee Bucks and Brewers.

He also bucked Republican leaders last year by pushing — successfully — for continued funding of the state Office of School Safety, which earned him a shoutout from Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul that Novak includes on his campaign website.

“I always take the temperature of this district,” he says. “I’m very, very connected to this district.

Grabe, he adds, is “taking the party-line script against Republicans. It doesn’t apply to me. Voters here just don’t see me in an election year.”

On a warm August Saturday evening, candidate Grabe sits on a bench among the trees and crickets outside a concert benefit for her campaign in Mount Horeb. Her high school drivers’ education teacher wishes her luck as he walks by.

“Just keep plugging away. That's a high road to go,” he says. “But someone's got to do it.”

By her own account, that’s pretty much how Grabe got into the race. A local real estate agent, Grabe first sought out public service through the Mount Horeb Rotary Club, where she serves as a board member. She is also a citizen representative on Mount Horeb’s Sustainability and Natural Resources Committee. 

When Tim White, a member of the Mount Horeb Village board, came to the Rotary Club after the map redistricting to look for Democratic candidates who might be interested in running for the new Assembly District 51, Grabe asked around on White’s behalf but came up empty-handed. Eventually she decided to run herself. “It was presented to me like ‘there’s a chance we could flip this district,’” Grabe says. 

She adds that Novak’s 2024 loss in the race for Dodgeville mayor was something that Democratic officials said would bode well for her campaign. Her top issue and the primary reason she ran, she says, is gridlock on state-level K-12 school funding: “There are funds there,” she says referring to the state’s surplus, “but they're not being released to fund the schools.”

A Dane County native, Grabe grew up with conservative parents and a strong love for agriculture. She moved to Miami, where she lived for 20 years. She worked as a personal trainer, and owned a bike shop, before moving back to Mount Horeb in 2005 to save the family farm. Her background in agriculture, she says, helps her connect with rural voters who might be hesitant or hostile toward the Democratic Party — much of the Assembly district she’s running for covers agriculture-heavy areas outside its largest municipalities, Mount Horeb and Dodgeville. 

The new legislative maps have been a focus of her campaign messaging. When canvassing, Grabe leads with them: holding up a photo of the old AD 51 and comparing it to the new one. 

“I don't even come in and say, ‘Hi, I'm running for state Assembly,’” Grabe says. “I ask them, ‘Are you aware of the new district maps?’ And then I show them the map.”

Her campaign manager, Yusuf Adama, says Grabe’s approach helps her reach across partisan lines and appeal to rural communities and values. The new district lines have given Democrats reason to go places they haven’t visited before — places where there wasn’t a real chance of winning. And it’s important to show up, he adds.

“It matters to people, right?” Adama says. “Someone said they hadn't had a Democrat come out there since, like, JFK, or something…I'm sure Democrats have gone out there since before, but the point is the way that people feel about it.” 

Measuring civic engagement in a quantifiable way is not easy. Isthmus attempted to fill in the gaps by talking to district-area voters about the race, and groups making an effort to promote debate between the candidates. 

Main Street Alliance is a small business advocacy group that has hosted candidate forums in Wisconsin since 2020, when the organization established a presence in the state, according to Shawn Phetteplace, the group’s campaigns director. It has organized forums for U.S Senate races, but this is the first time the group has gotten involved in state legislative races.This year the group is organizing six forums in Wisconsin — all in the state’s newly competitive districts with large numbers of farmers and small businesses. These are places where the organization “can make an impact,” says Phetteplace.

For the last 13 years in Wisconsin, he says, candidates running for office were either in “deep blue seats or deep red seats, and frankly, they could get reelected just because of partisanship, as opposed to actually doing their job,” Phetteplace says. “This is the opportunity to actually hold folks accountable and to be able to talk to them about the core issues.”

The group invited both Novak and Grabe to the Sept. 16 forum it is hosting with the Wisconsin Farmers Union at a restaurant in Mount Horeb. Phetteplace says the forum will be held even though Novak has declined to participate. Two other Republican candidates in races with confirmed forum dates — Sen. Joan Ballweg and Rep. Loren Oldenburg — have not yet confirmed their attendance. 

Ballweg’s district — Senate District 14, which she has represented since 2021 — had been a predominantly rural district before the redistricting process shifted its reach to include both rural Driftless Region areas and Democratic-leaning suburbs, like DeForest and the east side of Madison. Oldenburg’s district, Assembly District 96, which he has represented since 2019, is in the far west part of the state. It now includes parts of La Crosse, a college town with a high number of Democratic-voting students.

When asked why the Republicans in these races have either declined or not yet confirmed their participation in forums, Phetteplace says “you’ll have to ask them.” Ballweg and Oldenburg did not respond to questions from Isthmus. 

Resistance to joining the forums, in Phetteplace’s view, comes from party higher-ups who think putting a candidate in a public forum could be “risky.” Phetteplace says Wisconsin’s heavily gerrymandered maps made it so “people haven't felt like they needed to [participate in forums for a long time.”

“I think it's been a bad thing for our state,” Phetteplace says. “When you are only talking to people who agree with you all the time, you're going to think you're right, and there's gonna be no real feedback loop.”

Macy Buhler, owner of DeForest’s Yahara River Learning Center and a Main Street Alliance member, will be hosting the group’s forum between Ballweg, if she joins, and Sarah Keyeski, Ballweg’s Democratic challenger, on Sept. 24. The event will be held at Buhler’s child care center. 

Buhler says that gridlock in the Capitol has negatively affected her business: a lack of state-level funding for Wisconsin’s Child Care Counts subsidy has meant she is not able to hire employees to meet local demand and she says her local lawmakers have not been responsive. It is her first time hosting a candidate forum, which she credits to Wisconsin’s redistricted maps.

“This is the first time we actually feel like we have a chance and a voice to be heard, because we weren't feeling that before…pretty disenfranchised here,” Buhler says. 

Isthmus and WORT planned to attend a publicly posted September meeting hosted by the Iowa County Republicans, the Republican Party branch in District 51's largest county, but after an initial inquiry, the party responded in a Facebook message that “we have never had media at our meetings and don't plan to start now.” 

It’s Friday morning on a late summer day at Sjölinds Chocolate in Mount Horeb. Friends and longtime residents of the village, Lindsay Feuling (30 years) and Steve Grahn (40 years) are talking over coffee. Grahn acknowledges that he is not aware that Elizabeth Grabe, a Democrat and former neighbor, is running for state Assembly against incumbent Republican Todd Novak. Now that he knows, though, “I probably want to check to see what her stance is on a few issues,” he says. 

Feuling, however, counts Grabe a good friend and says he attended her launch party and has donated to her campaign. 

“I know she is a pretty solid progressive,” Feuling says. “And I support her as a candidate.” 

Feuling knows that the state recently went through a redistricting process, but is not sure how that affected competition for the Assembly seat. Grahn is not aware of the redistricting changes affecting Mount Horeb. 

Rachel LaCasse-Ford says Grahn is not alone. “I've mentioned [the maps changing] to a few people in the community, and they, you know, look at me with a blank stare because they don't know what I'm talking about,’ says LaCasse-Ford, president of the Mount Horeb Chamber of Commerce. “So that really made our business advocacy committee think: What can we do to make sure people understand that something has happened and they need to pay attention? So we're actually partnering with the library on Oct. 1 and providing an informational session about government and what you need to know — federal and all the way down to local government — and how [government] impacts you as an individual, as a citizen and as a community.” 

LaCasse-Ford believes that Mount Horeb will have a bigger impact now that it isn’t lumped into Assembly District 80, which also included Middleton and Verona, and is instead part of a more rural district. 

“[Residents] need to understand the importance of getting out and voting,” La-Casse Ford says, adding that there is no “given” the district will be red or blue. 

Twenty-two miles and about 25 minutes away, Paul Julson is having coffee with friends at the popular coffee shop Cathryn’s Market in Dodgeville. Julson is a lifelong resident of Dodgeville and a staunch supporter of Novak. 

“Yeah I voted for Todd from day one,” Julson says. “I know him personally, and I can go to him and voice my opinion, regardless of whether he likes it or not and he will sit there and you know he understands it and listens to what I say.”

Julson is aware that the state Legislature approved different district lines and he is not pleased. His take is that the maps are now less fair than they were before. He argues that the Democrats changed the map “to get the vote they want,” and calls the new maps “manipulation.” 

Will Schira, back in Mount Horeb, sees it much differently. He says people he frequently interacts with have been “waiting for and wanting” new maps. “The main impact it has had is a feeling of hope, of possible change,” says Schira, while shopping at the Mount Horeb Farmers’ Market in mid-September. “It brings a little bit of hope to what has been a very depressing system for the last 10-plus years.”

Schira adds that he would “absolutely” be interested in attending a candidate forum. He says such an event would let him see candidates think on their feet and respond to constituent concerns, rather than read from prepared statements. 

When asked how he’d feel if a candidate were unwilling to appear at a forum, Schira says it would negatively impact his view of the candidate: “If they're not willing to appear at a forum and let their views be publicly heard and face public questioning, what are they going to do once they're elected?” Schira says. “If they're already not willing to engage with the public, is that going to change? Doesn’t seem likely.”

On Aug. 16, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin announced a “starting lineup” of the most competitive state-level races, many of which include previously Republican districts they hope to flip Democratic. District 51 is on the list. Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Ben Wikler told the Associated Press in March that he thinks voter engagement in state-level races could create a “reverse coattails” effect, driving up enthusiasm and turnout toward the top of the ticket.

But John Johnson, a research fellow at the Marquette University Law School Poll, says experts don’t expect Wisconsin’s new state legislative maps to have a significant impact on voter turnout; ultimately, he says, the top of the ticket drives turnout. Those who know their state legislative candidates, let alone which Assembly or Senate district they reside in, are in the minority, Johnson says: “The reason why turnout is high in a presidential year is because there's this group of voters who care somewhat about who the president is.” Still, Johnson thinks it’s possible that “more door knockers on the ground” will drive Democratic voter turnout, an argument party higher-ups have put forth.

The newly competitive districts could have another impact, growing the field of candidates who might run, adds Johnson: people like Grabe, for example, who had never sought higher office before. 

On paper, says Johnson, the new District 51 does not even look competitive — “it looks like what I would call a safely-Democratic seat.” But Novak is insulated, Johnson says, by an “incumbent advantage” that comes from a greater knowledge of campaigning and higher levels of recognition in the area he’s running for. Still, that advantage predominantly applies to 53% of his district he already represents, while Johnson says the effect will be halved in the 47% of the district that’s completely new.

“I think the Democrat still has a strong shot just given where that district is located, how much of it is new, how much the lean of the seat has changed from the old version to the new version,” Johnson says. “But if it was an open seat, if it wasn't an incumbent Republican, I think you would see that much more of a benefit to the Democrat.”

[Editor's note: This article originally misidentified Tim White. He is a member of the Mount Horeb Village board.]

This article is part of U.S. Democracy Day, a nationwide collaborative on Sept. 15, the International Day of Democracy, in which news organizations cover how democracy works and the threats it faces. To learn more, visit usdemocracyday.org.

Isthmus and WORT 89.9-FM Madison collaborated on this project. Abigail Leavins contributed audio.