When Wikler became chair of the Wisconsin Democrats in 2019, the party seemed consigned to permanent minority status in the state. After the Republican Scott Walker was elected governor in 2010, Republicans enacted shockingly lopsided electoral maps that all but ensured their continued dominance in the State Legislature, even if Democrats won more votes. When Wisconsinites elected a Democratic governor and attorney general in 2018, the Republican Legislature stripped them of some of their powers, a move that was in turn ratified by the state’s conservative Supreme Court. That court would go on to put in place a new set of even more gerrymandered maps, strengthening Republican control. Wisconsin politics seemed like a locked box.
But, as Wikler recognized, there was a key. Wisconsin Supreme Court justices are elected, and if voters could flip a Supreme Court seat, it would open the way for a reconsideration of the state’s maps, which would finally allow for fair legislative races. Wikler threw the party’s might into electing Janet Protasiewicz to the court last year, in what ended up being the most expensive State Supreme Court race in American history. On the bench, Protasiewicz cast the deciding vote to toss the Republican gerrymander. That, in turn, set the stage for Democrats to flip 14 seats in the State Legislature this year. Wikler is convinced that in 2026, Democrats could turn the State Senate and Assembly blue.
It’s true, of course, that Kamala Harris lost Wisconsin in November. But her margin there was closer than in any other swing state, a bitter consolation prize but one that’s still testament to Wikler’s organizing skill. And under his leadership, Wisconsin Democrats raised more money than every other state Democratic Party and re-elected the embattled senator Tammy Baldwin. As one Republican strategist told Politico in 2022, the state’s Democrats had their “back broken” during the Walker years, “and they never got back up again until Ben Wikler came.”
Now the national party is in urgent need of such revitalization. “The fact that Democrats have a clear shot at winning a trifecta in Wisconsin in 2026, it was from years of work in Supreme Court races, and work with the legislative caucuses in Wisconsin,” Wikler told me. “And there are fights like that all across the country.”
For example, as he points out, if Republicans hadn’t won control of North Carolina’s Supreme Court in 2022, their party probably wouldn’t have won the House this year. That’s because last year, North Carolina’s new conservative court majority put in place gerrymandered maps that had previously been struck down. Those maps gave Republicans three new House seats. Now the party seems likely to end up with a three-seat House majority. If Trump succeeds in passing another gargantuan tax cut for the rich, it will be “a direct result of Republican investment in winning a Supreme Court majority in North Carolina,” Wikler said.