The Fear-Fair Coalition

In 2010, Wisconsin Republicans achieved a governmental trifecta: control of the governorship and both houses of the state legislature. They immediately set up secret chambers in which they plotted how to redraw legislative and congressional districts on the basis of the 2010 census results to increase Republican representation out of all proportion to their true prevalence in the electorate. They ran one computer simulation after another until they finally hit on the one that maximized their chances statewide. And that’s what they enacted into law as soon as they took office in 2011 and proceeded to use for the next 8 years to essentially get whatever they wanted. The first crack in the scheme didn’t occur until 2018, when Democrat Tony Evers was elected governor in a statewide election, where local district boundaries were irrelevant.

But that only meant that SOME Republican legislation ran into a veto pen. It didn’t mean that Democratic proposals had even a fighting chance of serious consideration. Republicans felt free to treat Democratic priorities and concerns with disdain.

Notably, Gov. Evers was empowered under Wisconsin law to convene special sessions to address serious matters of public concern that had not received adequate attention during regular legislative sessions. From 2021 thru 2023 he tried to do this 6 times:

 • 2021 Jan.: modernizing the state unemployment-insurance system

 • 2021 May: expanding Medicaid under the federal Affordable Care Act

 • 2021 July: increasing funding for K-12 schools and the university system

 • 2022 June: repealing the state’s abortion ban

 • 2022 Sep.: letting citizens initiate constitutional amendments by petition

 • 2023 Aug.: addressing workforce challenges

None of these proposals were taken seriously. In most cases, the Republicans called the special session to order then immediately passed a motion to adjourn without taking action, essentially thumbing their noses at anything anyone had dared to suggest that might not have been on their own agenda.

But during this same period, statewide elections were also being conducted every year or two for the state’s 3rd branch of government, the judiciary, and those state supreme-court races were likewise won by candidates the Republicans didn’t favor. And that set the stage for the case of “Clarke v. Wisconsin Elections Commission” where, on December 22, 2023, the court ruled that the state’s legislative maps violated the Wisconsin Constitution’s requirement that districts consist of contiguous — physically adjoining — territory, and barred their use in future elections.

The court created a remedy for drawing replacement maps. It invited the parties in the lawsuit — including Gov. Evers and legislative Republicans — to submit proposals, and appointed two independent consultants to assess them against criteria such as equal population, contiguity, compactness, federal-law compliance, community and municipal boundaries, and partisan bias. This approach worked. Lawmakers accepted Gov. Evers’s proposed maps and passed a law implementing them, and he signed them into law on February 19, 2024.

The effects were immediately visible in the 2024 elections for the state assembly, where all of the seats were up for election, as substantially more Democrats were elected. The effect was less pronounced in the state senate, where only half of the seats were open, but Democrats made inroads there as well. Still, Republicans retained control of both chambers and continued to use that control to adhere to their own agenda.

Then came the so-called “blue tsunami” of 2026, in which control of both chambers of the legislature flipped to the Democrats. State Republicans believed (with considerable justification) that this was due more to voter revolt against Republican priorities at the national, not state, level, but the motives of the electorate didn’t matter to the practical effect of the results. The GOP was no longer calling the shots.

Which brings us to their greatest fear, that the new Democratic majority will do to THEM the same thing they had done to the Dems 16 years earlier: gerrymander the living daylights out of their currently safe districts. That won’t be an immediate concern, since the Wisconsin Constitution says that ROUTINE redistricting (which wasn’t the case under the “Clarke” decision) can only be done at the first session following the federal decennial census. That restriction doesn’t apply to congressional districts, however, and the red team undoubtedly frets that the blue team will still maintain their trifecta in 2031 and rig the game against the GOP for the entire decade of the 2030s.

And there are undoubtedly Democrats who would love to do exactly that (“give ’em a taste of their own medicine”), but it’s my hope that they’re a minority, that most legislative Dems feel sufficiently confident that they’re speaking to the true needs and concerns of the general populace that they can win FAIR elections just on their own merits, without needing to play shady games to make it happen.

So I’ve taken to calling this the fear-fair coalition: fearful Republicans teaming up with fair-minded Democrats to finally — FINALLY — enact a non-partisan redistricting commission charged with redrawing electoral-district boundaries after every federal decennial census without regard to partisan impact.

Let’s get it done, folks. It’s way overdue.