Campaign Spotlight: Senate District 27

Senate District 27 is not on most people’s radar as a contested race this cycle. Covering the northwest part of the Madison metro area, SD27 is half of the third bluest part of the United States. In 2024, Kamala Harris won this area with over 76 percent of the vote. 

The Democratic incumbent in SD27 is Dianne Hesselbein. She’s the current State Senate minority leader. If she retains her seat and Democrats gain just a couple seats in the senate, she is very likely to become the majority leader. That means Dianne Hesselbein is Wisconsin’s Chuck Schumer, and she acts like it. 

Hesselbein’s Establishment Record 

Hesselbein is pro-business and anti-worker. She received the “Champion of Commerce” award from the conservative-led Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce alongside a slew of campaign contributions from business groups. She’s received particularly large amounts from alcohol distributors, which might explain why she considers full marijuana legalization a “non-starter”. She supports deregulation like fast-tracking government contracts rather than following bidding and labor protections. She hasn’t signed on to the best legislative package to tax the fucking billionaires and she opposes the data center moratorium. She also has not signed on to the $20 minimum wage bill, or a bill allowing municipalities to create a local minimum wage. 

She is also bad on healthcare. There is good legislation for expanding healthcare and holding hospitals accountable like the BadgerCare public option bill, or Citizen Action’s hospital accountability act. Hesselbein is not on it, preferring incremental solutions like Medicaid Expansion that even some Republicans support. 

Hesselbein is a genocide denier and Zionist. In 2019, she organized a “legislative exchange” trip to Israel with Robin Vos and the pro-genocide Milwaukee Jewish Federation. She distanced herself from campus protests, while other Madison electeds supported them. She won’t join a bill lifting restrictions on boycotting Israel. She helped Senators to hide behind a voice vote to pass the IHRA bill, which exempts criticism of Israel from free speech protections.

Hesselbein is MAGA-friendly. If we win a trifecta and her pattern of leadership continues, she will waste the opportunity on bipartisan compromises that reflect her and Republicans’ values, not the needs of Wisconsinites. The 2025 budget season is instructive. That year, a couple of GOP defections gave Democrats in the State Senate some actual leverage against Republican minority rule for the first time in over a decade. State Senators Kelda Roys and Chris Larson wanted to hold the line and wrench concessions out of Republicans, but Dianne Hesselbein snuffed out this brief rally cry. She used her leadership position to settle for a deal and pass the budget. Even worse, she later said she would have supported Tony Evers and Robin Vos blowing the budget surplus on a property tax rebate, if only they had politely invited her to the negotiations. 

And finally, Dianne Hesselbein actively organizes against the left. As head of the State Senate Democratic Committee (SSDC) she controls where a lot of campaign money moves, and she moves it against the left. A recent glaring example was seen in the recent SD17 open primary. Hesselbein tried to push out every other Democratic Party candidate except Jenna Jacobson, who shares her pro-business and genocidal values. When some of those candidates stayed in the race, SSDC directed nearly $400,000 to Jacobson. In other primaries, SSDC also endorsed or donated early, deterring anyone else who might have considered running.

Write in Nathan Kalmoe

SD27 is so deep blue it would be a safe seat for a socialist, a radical, someone who pushes the envelope in the state legislature. The good news is someone like that is running against Dianne Hesselbein. His name is Nathan Kalmoe. Kalmoe is an activist, political scientist, union member, dad, and renter in Verona. He became frustrated with the ways that establishment Democrats refuse to stand up on issues that matter to people, and how they punish challengers to deter anyone from getting into a primary.  

Kalmoe points out Hesselbein’s many shortcomings, and that there hasn’t been a contested primary in SD27 since 2012. His campaign is giving voters a choice. He is running on a very robust platform rejected by too many centrists in the Democratic Party. It includes universal healthcare, education, childcare, immigrant rights, worker rights, taxing the rich, opposition to data centers and the 765 utility line, and many other issues. 

He won’t take money from PACs or businesses and is even limiting donations from individuals to $200. His campaign is starting too late to properly primary Hesselbein, so instead he has registered as a write-in candidate. While unfortunate in terms of limited campaigning time to educate voters and raise awareness, Kalmoe’s run has already had an impact.  

What a Write-In Can Do

Last spring, I urged people to run a primary against Hesselbein and other conservative Democrats. If Kalmoe had declared during the primary and caught even a little bit of the anti-Zionist fire that is currently torching Ed Sheeran’s career, then he may have beaten Hesselbein and saved us from having to stop the MAGA-enabling she’ll try to perpetrate as Majority Leader.

There were rumblings and rumors about someone else challenging Hesselbein, but it did not happen, and Kalmoe only stepped up after the primary. There is a lesson here about more open, public political conversation, and active recruitment for socialist and progressive candidates. Yes, our dumb electoral system turns two progressives running for the same seat into spoilers. The solution is not to whisper and rely on rumors, but rather to talk openly, let people considering a run recognize each other, and hopefully work it out. 

Given how blue SD27 is, plus the fact that there is no Republican challenger, Kalmoe’s write-in campaign has no chance of spoiling the race and giving the seat to a Republican, but it also has a very low chance of winning. All write-ins for any State Senate race in 2024 got 10,049 votes combined. That's less than 1 percent (0.66%) of the total. In 2022, Democrat Jarrod Schroeder ran an organized write-in campaign against Republican State Senator Devin LeMahieu when there was no declared Democrat challenging him, and got 4.6% of the vote. That year a significant number of voters also wrote in various names against Republicans (John Jagler, Van Wanggaard, and Jesse James), but the most any of them got was 5.86%. If Kalmoe gets more than 5%, it will be an accomplishment. 

That doesn’t mean a write in campaign is hopeless, or useless. If Hesselbein’s voters give Kalmoe’s last minute, very limited campaign more than 5% of the vote, it will send a strong message to Hesselbein. That might be enough to give her pause before she undermines progressive legislation in favor of bipartisan compromise with fascists. It might even push the Senate Democratic caucus to elect someone else majority leader. We can always hope.

And, with enough attention, Kalmoe still could win. In 2022, there were 96,534 voters in SD27. Of those, 65,618 voted for Hesselbein. This year might have a higher turnout, though the 30,863 who voted for a Republican in 2022 will likely skip this ballot line, bringing the total down. If Kalmoe gets his message to 30 or 40 thousand voters in the next few weeks, he could edge Hesselbein out. His write-in campaign would need to go viral, but that’s not impossible. Ed Sheeran, a mega popstar celebrity who tried to stay neutral on genocide, is seeing his entire career crash out worldwide right now. 

Hesselbein is not even neutral. She’s pro-genocide. 

To support Nathan Kalmoe, donate or take action.