Donald Trump: Gage Skidmore
Donald Trump surrounded by a voter drop box, Tammy Baldwin, Robi
Wisconsin’s top ten political stories of 2024 include:
No. 1: Former President Donald Trump won Wisconsin. Trump, officially nominated at the Republican Party’s Milwaukee convention, got 1.69 million Wisconsin votes, or 29,400 more than Democrat Kamala Harris. Trump’s Wisconsin vote totals increased by 21% between 2016, when he first won the state, and 2024. More than 3.36 million Wisconsin votes were cast for president.
No. 2: U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin re-elected. The Madison Democrat continued her historic 32-year record in partisan politics by winning a third six-year term in the U.S. Senate. She defeated Republican Eric Hovde, a bank executive and real estate developer, by 28,800 votes — about the same margin by which Trump won the state.
No. 3: Democrats gained 14 legislative seats. In January, Republicans will still control the Wisconsin Legislature by a 54-45 Assembly margin and a 18-15 Senate majority. Democrats, running in new Assembly and Senate districts not drawn by Republicans, gained 10 Assembly and four Senate seats, largely because of wins by women candidates.
The gains boosted Democrats’ hope of winning the Senate in 2026, when twice as many Republicans as Democrats face re-election.
No. 4: Decisions of Supreme Court’s liberal majority. The four-justice majority reversed precedents set by conservative justices. It allowed Nov. 5 voters to use secure drop boxes, invited a review of the controversial 2012 ruling that upheld Act 10, and replaced former conservative Justice David Prosser’s name on the state law library with that of the state’s first woman lawyer, Lavinia Goodell.
The court’s threat to draw new legislative district lines forced Republican legislators to agree to boundaries proposed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers.
No. 5: U.S. House Republicans. Mike Gallagher stunned Republicans by resigning his 8th District seat in April, creating a vacancy that went unfilled until the November election of Republican Tony Wied. And 3rd District Republican Derrick Van Orden won re-election in western Wisconsin, although by narrower margins than Trump.
No. 6: Voters OK record $4.4 billion in school referendums. Residents of 169 school districts raised their property taxes by passing referendums totaling $4.4 billion to build schools and upgrade old facilities. A study by the Wisconsin Policy Forum, citing data from the National Center for Education Statistics, found a 90% passage rate in cities; 87% in suburbs, 70% in rural communities and 54% in towns.
No. 7: Stalemate on funds to fight PFAs. In mid-2023, legislators and Evers set aside $125 million to fight PFAs pollution increasingly showing up in water supplies, lakes and rivers. But a disagreement over whether someone who buys property should be liable for PFAs cleanup they did not cause has kept the $125 million from being spent.
No. 8: No tax-cut deal boosts surplus. Evers has accepted only small income tax cuts passed by Republicans and rejected billions of dollars in other tax cuts. So, state government is projected to have a stunning $4.6 billion surplus when it closes the books on this two-year budget on June 30.
No. 9: Assembly Speaker Robin Vos survives. The longest-serving Assembly speaker in Wisconsin history, Vos has survived recall attempts, criticism from Trump and new legislative districts that cost his caucus 10 seats. But the Republican returns to the Capitol stronger than ever, vowing that the next state budget won’t pass until Evers signs a new GOP-crafted income tax cut.
No. 10: Michael Gableman’s career descent. The problems of the former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice continued when the Office of Lawyer Regulation filed a complaint that could cost him his law license. The complaint alleged misconduct in Gableman’s conduct of a state Assembly probe of the state’s 2020 presidential election results.
Honorable mentions:
*Former 7th District Congressman and Fox News commentator Sean Duffy was nominated by President-elect Trump to be secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation.
*Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler began a campaign to be first leader of the national Democratic Party from Wisconsin. The 448-member DNC will choose a leader to rebuild the party in February.
*The Universities of Wisconsin continued to close two-year campuses, touching off a debate over the system’s future funding and mission.
And 2025? Fasten your seat belt, with an April Supreme Court election charting the court’s future, a new state budget debate, and unknowns about the impact of Trump Administration decisions on Wisconsin.
Steven Walters started covering the Capitol in 1988. Contact him at stevenscotwalters@gmail.com.
