Edit

Time to Pay the Piper: Wisconsin GOP Lawmakers Can’t Outrun Their Own Records

Government and Politics

October 24, 2024


MADISON, Wis. — Even as Republicans fight for votes, they’re fighting to roll back the freedoms of the voters they are trying to win over. While Wisconsin Republicans like to claim they’re working for Wisconsinites, their record is a very different story. As Election Day approaches, we’re taking a look back at the past 14 years under Wisconsin’s gerrymander.

Thanks to gerrymandered maps rigged so they could never lose, Republican politicians have been able to cling to power while ignoring their constituents. Now, with new, fair legislative maps, Wisconsinites finally have an opportunity to restore balance to the State Legislature and elect Democrats who will fight for us—not an extreme agenda to benefit the wealthy at the expense of everyone else.

Here’s what Republicans have actually done with their decade-long stranglehold on our Legislature: 

Republican politicians in Madison fought to roll back reproductive freedoms.

  • While Wisconsin voters overwhelmingly support restoring abortion access, Republicans in the Legislature spent the years before the fall of Roe trying to restrict reproductive freedom and quickly gaveled out of special sessions called by Governor Evers to address the catastrophic impact of the 1849 abortion ban.

Republicans in the Legislature fought to suppress democracy through gerrymandering… 

  • Wisconsin Republicans drew the 2011 legislative maps in secret to disproportionately advantage the GOP.

…and they used their gerrymandered power to prevent action on the things that matter most to the majority of Wisconsinites. 

  • Then they used their gerrymandered majorities to block hundreds of Governor Evers’ nominees, delay settlement funds meant to fight the opioid epidemic, refuse to hear bills on commonsense, family-supporting laws like paid family leave, and obstruct action on the priorities like child care that Wisconsinites rely on. 

Wisconsin Republicans fought to keep Wisconsinites working poor, and blocked efforts to make workplaces more safe. 

  • Republican politicians in Madison have repeatedly rejected raising Wisconsin’s minimum wage, which currently sits far below a livable wage. Legislative Republicans also supported rollbacks to Wisconsin’s child labor laws, and failed to pass workplace protections for women and LGBTQ+ workers. 

And Republicans in the Legislature fought to restrict expanded access to affordable, quality health care. 

  • Despite broad public support for expanding Medicaid, Wisconsin Republicans have rejected every attempt to expand this critical program for more than a decade. Thanks to GOP obstruction, Wisconsin is now a national outlier as one of just ten states to not fully expand Medicaid.