Winning the Trifecta
Wisconsin is once again having a “most important election year of our lives”. All of the vital organizing going on–from preparing for ICE, fighting for food sovereignty, affordable housing, and public education, to targeted protests and political education–is being shaped, if not overshadowed, by the elections.
Nationally, we’re watching the President and his fascist party do their level best to end the democratic experiment in the US. Ignoring workers burning down their warehouses in a way that might generalize into broad disruption of the economy. In Wisconsin, the opportunity to cast off minority rule by fascist Republicans grabs our focus. Winning these elections alone is not an adequate response to fascism or corporatism. However, the election outcomes will substantially change the political and social landscape.
Elections are at least worth paying attention to and often participating in. Our elections page is intended to make that easy by listing every race and linking to related articles. Today, we’re adding articles that introduce the State Senate and Assembly. This one will take on some strategy questions and identify our opposition within the Democratic Party and simultaneously publish two other articles, one focusing on primary contests in Democrat-held districts, the other on Republican-held districts.
These primaries will determine Wisconsin’s future. Democrats are very likely to win this year, but the details matter. We don’t want to see Wisconsin repeat Joe Biden’s disastrous 2020-2024 term that all but ushered Trump back into power. We must not allow Wisconsin’s centrists and bipartisan compromisers to waste opportunities for holding Republicans accountable, and that starts with identifying and working, not only to win a trifecta with Democratic control of Governor, State Senate and State Assembly, but importantly, a trifecta with a strong left populist presence.
Wisconsin’s Legislature
There are 99 seats in the Wisconsin Assembly, and 33 in the State Senate. Each Senate District is made up of three Assembly Districts. State Senators serve 4 year terms, and Assembly Representatives 2 years. This year, 17 of the Senators and all of the Assembly Reps are up for election. Currently, Republicans control the Assembly with 54 of 99 seats, and the Senate with 18 of 33 seats.
Gaining control of both houses is very doable. This is the first year with new maps for those 17 Senate Districts. Thanks to Tony Evers’ compromising, the maps are still gerrymandered in Republicans’ favor, but much less than before. In 2024, Democrats took 5 of the 10 available Republican Senate Districts. This year, Democrats only need to gain two out of 17 seats up for election to hold a majority in the chamber. Winning the Senate should be so easy that failing to do so would be a totally inexcusable debacle.
In the State Assembly, Democrats gained 10 seats in 2024. Repeating that feat might be more difficult, as this year every Republican incumbent has won at least once in their newly drawn districts. There are a number of Republicans who won in 2024, only because the Democrats put up very low quality candidates, both in those districts and nationally. If primary voters stop the centrist establishment from repeating those mistakes in districts like SD17 and AD21 we will easily gain the only 5 seats needed to flip the Assembly. Confidence in our success can be measured by the number of Republicans retiring from both the Senate and the Assembly. They know they’re losing, and they don’t want any part of it.
Tale of two centrists
There are at least two types of centrists working hard to fuck up 2026 for us. One is overtly crooked and malintentioned, and the other is well-intended, but misguided. Both need to be defeated in as many primaries as possible if we are going to win a Democratic trifecta worth a damn.
Let’s look at the crooked first. These politicians have agendas. Some seek only personal gain, investment profits, and the private/public revolving door. Some have an ideological drive to defend a foreign policy rooted in imperialism, genocide, and hatred. Other agendas are indirect, like maintaining status relationships with business people or wealthy donors, or deepening roots in Democratic establishment political circles. These agendas can be insidious. Politicians might set their eyes on their highest ideals, while allowing their invisible personal motives to take priority over fully defeating fascist Republicans in their daily routines. Many such centrists would rather lose to Republicans than mobilize the party base in pursuit of permanent affordability, transparency, and limits on their wealth and power.
These crooked centrists might be entrenched and powerful, but they are actually a small minority within the party. Exposure weakens them. Their politics are not aligned with the Democratic Party values or platform. As more people learn who they are and how they operate, they lose power within the party. Maybe they’ll even leave. Good riddance.
The misguided centrists are a tougher nut to crack. They seem to genuinely think that repeating losing strategies is good. The clearest mistake they make is to take huge swaths of the Democratic electorate for granted. They assume that all urban voters are in their camp and that all liberal and left-of-liberal voters must support the lesser evil. With these faulty assumptions, they easily conclude that the way to expand the party’s vote share is winning over moderate Republicans.
In reality, no one likes being taken for granted and moderate Republicans are rare. The Democratic Party loses far more base voters than they gain by courting Republicans. Unfortunately, when faced with these facts, many misguided centrists turn reactionary. They double down on bad ideas, responding to low turnout by demeaning and further neglecting those communities. When leftist groups successfully erode Democratic vote share, the reactionary centrist goes on the attack. This only drives more people out of the party.
Centrists are spiraling, and playing a doomed losing game. Some authoritarian leftists might argue for jumping ship, letting centrist losers retain control of the Democratic Party until they sink it entirely. That’s a risky proposition, as the immediate consequences are more Trump, more MAGA, and more facism in the USA.
Instead, we strive to wrestle control of the Democratic Party away from entrenched elites. If left populists up and down the ticket and across the state win, it could wrest power and lead to future populist Democratic wins, eventually making far right conservatives only as relevant as they were with The Constitution Party. A landslide leftist win isn’t going to unlock a socialist utopia, but it will shift the entire political landscape toward one where pursuing radical and revolutionary horizons feels less ridiulous, and doesn’t come at the risk of enabling greater fascism.
