Wisconsin After the Map

In 2010, Wisconsin elected Scott Walker and a Republican Legislature. The next year, that Legislature drew new district maps meant to secure a lasting majority, Wisconsin Watch reported. They worked. The maps survived the 2018 wave that put Tony Evers in the governor's office. They held until a liberal majority on the state Supreme Court threw them out, and Democrats made big gains on new maps in 2024.

On Nov. 3, the rest of the wall came down. Democrats won the Assembly 53 to 46 and the Senate 18 to 15, flipping four Senate seats, according to Wisconsin Watch. David Crowley was elected governor over Tom Tiffany, 54 to 46, with nearly all votes counted. Democrats also took the attorney general, secretary of state and treasurer offices.

Only four sitting senators and one sitting representative were in the Legislature the last time Democrats ran it. A whole generation of lawmakers has known nothing but the old map.

The map is the anchor

Every state has a story about who draws the lines. Wisconsin's is among the clearest about what lines can do. For more than a decade, the shape of the districts held the shape of the Legislature in place, even in a year like 2018, when the statewide vote went the other way for governor.

The map, more than the trifecta it finally allowed, is the anchor of this moment.

Crowley put the change in one sentence: "For the first time since 2010, Wisconsin voters will trust us to lead." UW-Madison political scientist Barry Burden put it in another. Democrats' policy plans, he said, "have been stymied since 2010 when they lost control of state government."

The backlog

What comes out of sixteen years of waiting is a long list. Expanding Medicaid eligibility under BadgerCare. Restoring protections for public-sector unions. Putting abortion rights in the state constitution. Legalizing marijuana. Raising the minimum wage. Spending the budget surplus on child care, local aid, public schools and the university system.

The leaders say they are ready. "We know that people will be counting on us to deliver, and we will deliver," said Assembly Democratic Leader Greta Neubauer, who is expected to become speaker. Senate Democratic Leader Dianne Hesselbein of Middleton said her caucus wants to "know on day one what we're going to be doing." And Sen. Brad Pfaff promised something more basic: "They will have a more open process."

The case they are owed

Republicans have their warnings ready, and some of them are fair. Robin Vos, the longtime Assembly speaker who did not seek reelection, predicted the new majority's politics will mean "paying back their powerful political allies." Sen. Mary Felzkowski pointed to the plain fact of inexperience: "The Democrats haven't been in control for 16 years." Another Republican senator, Rob Stafsholt, called the night an "eye opener."

The inexperience point deserves weight. Writing a budget is different from voting against one. A caucus that has spent sixteen years in the minority has to learn the second job fast, with a two-year budget for 2027 to 2029 already on the calendar.

What we owe each other

Here is the test that matters most, and it has nothing to do with the backlog.

The philosopher T.M. Scanlon asked what we owe one another, and he answered with a standard: could you justify a choice to the person with the least power in it, on grounds that person could not reasonably reject? For more than a decade, many Wisconsin voters lived in districts drawn, in Wisconsin Watch's words, to secure a lasting majority for one party. Democrats said so, loudly and for years.

Now they hold the pen. The covenant for this majority is to govern as if the map were still drawn against them. Hold the open process Pfaff promised. Write rules a Republican minority could accept. And when the next lines are drawn, draw them the way they spent a decade asking Republicans to.

The old map is gone. The temptation to draw a new one in your own favor never leaves. Wisconsin will learn whether its new majority remembers what the old one taught.

Results are unofficial until certified. This op-ed is part of The State's series on the 12 legislative chambers that changed party control on Nov. 3, all of them to Democrats, according to Ballotpedia.