State Senate candidates Lisa White (left, photo courtesy of candidate), Corrine Hendrickson (center, Wisconsin Examiner photo) and Sarah Harrison (right, photo courtesy of candidate)
Wisconsin Democrats have their eyes set on winning the Senate majority in 2026 and are two seats away from that outcome. With the general elections over a year away, current lawmakers started working towards their goal over the summer — endorsing their preferred candidates and working with them to boost their messages and critiques of Republican incumbents.
But the strategy has ruffled feathers with some announced and potential candidates, who say lawmakers discouraged them from running and are acting as though party “insiders” should be able to determine who represents local communities.
November 2026 will be the first time legislative maps adopted in 2024 will be in effect for the 17 odd-numbered Senate seats up for election. Democrats were able to cut the Republican majority from 22 seats to 18 seats in 2024. They will need to win two additional seats to take the majority in 2026.
There are three seats on Democrats’ target list: Senate District 5, currently held by Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green), Senate District 17, currently held by Sen. Rob Hutton (R-Brookfield), and Senate District 22, currently held by Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine). Democrats are also looking to hold Senate District 31, currently represented by Sen. Jeff Smith (D-Brunswick).
After the new state budget was signed in early July, Democrats immediately turned their attention to the elections. Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton) and other members of the Senate Democratic caucus showed up for a pair of campaign announcements in July.
Rep. Jenna Jacobson (D-Oregon) announced her challenge to Marklein, and Rep. Robyn Vining (D-Wauwatosa) launched her campaign challenging Hutton. The announcements were boosted by the Wisconsin State Senate Democratic Campaign Committee (SSDC), which is the lawmakers’ political arm that works to help Democrats win elections.
“One of the reasons why senators are getting involved with these candidates that are running is because we’ve known them for years,” Hesselbein said, recalling that she first met Jacobson in 2017 while she was serving on the village of Oregon Board of Trustees. “I was really excited about her candidacy.”
Reps. Jenna Jacobson and Robyn Vining pose for a photo with members of the Senate Democratic caucus after Vining’s campaign launch in July. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
Hesselbein told the Examiner in July that the endorsements are not coming from the party.
“It’s senators that know the content of the character of Jenna Jacobson and Robin Vining,” Hesselbein said. “That’s why we’re supporting them. We know that if there’s going to be a primary, there’ll be a primary.”
Hesselbein said she spoke with all of the people who were considering running to let them know what she was thinking. She said it was important to her that people know where she stood, mentioning that when she ran unsuccessfully for the Assembly in 2010, a late endorsement took her by surprise.
“I wish I would have known at the beginning what they were going to do. I’ve always been very extremely honest and forthright with everybody,” Hesselbein said. “They might be upset that I chose a candidate, but they certainly know the reasons why, and we had a conversation about it.”
Senate District 17
For the last decade, Marklein has represented Senate District 17 — winning three elections easily and serving as the chair of the powerful Joint Finance Committee since 2021.
Lafayette County Democratic Party Chair Nancy Fisker said her community is looking for someone who will represent the values and needs of rural Wisconsin and the task of beating Marklein, who tends to vote along party lines, will be hard.
“He’s a great politician. He has a really great ground game. He’s been in office long enough that he has people in place who will put him in the right place at the right time,” Fisker said. “He’s very sociable, and people love that.”
Marklein won SD 17 with 60% of the vote in 2022. Under the new maps, however, the district is more competitive. An analysis by John Johnson, a research fellow at Marquette University, found the district leaned Democratic by 1 percentage point in the 2024 presidential election and by over 4 percentage points in the 2024 U.S. Senate race.
Marklein hasn’t announced whether he will run for reelection yet. In July, he reported raising over $69,000.
Fisker said the new maps have led to renewed excitement around these races. That excitement can be seen, she said, in the number of people who have shown interest in running, which was as many as seven people at one point.
The first candidate to enter the race was Lisa White, a Potosi businesswoman and grandmother. She said she’s been concerned about cuts to Medicaid by the Trump administration as well as women’s and rural health care in general.
“My determination is to represent the southwestern portion of our state, which has not happened for decades,” White told the Wisconsin Examiner in an interview. “I feel I’m the singular voice in that pool of people who can truly, truly represent the entire district, and not just the Madison area.”
White also said she wants to see an end to the private school voucher program in Wisconsin.
Corrine Hendrickson, a well-known child care advocate, is also planning to enter the race for the seat and launch her campaign later this month.
Hendrickson told the Examiner in an interview that the recent budget process pushed her to consider running. The budget’s investment in child care did not meet what many child care advocates, including Hendrickson, said was necessary to help keep them afloat. Hendrickson also recently made the decision to close her own family child care program.
“We’re talking to the representatives. We’re inviting them in. We’re showing them our books… and it’s not enough, and so to me, that means that our representatives truly aren’t listening, and they’re just really moving the goal posts so that they have an excuse not to invest in child care,” Hendrickson said.
Hendrickson said she was excited when she learned so many people were considering running in the race.
“We’ve had to beg people to run against this man in the past,” Hendrickson said, adding that knowing there were others weighing running made her consider, “Am I the best person? What makes me the best person?”
“Really, the only way to find that out is to go through the process,” Hendrickson said.
With so many potential candidates, Fisker said county parties across the district decided they would host forums for those considering a run.
County Democratic parties in Wisconsin usually do not endorse candidates in primaries, Fisker said.
“It’s always been very difficult to get people to run. People just aren’t interested in running for a variety of reasons. So this year we started looking around like we always do, and you know, we had seven people who raised their hand and said, ‘I think I’m interested, but I want to look into it a little further,’” Fisker said. “We were amazed.”
It’s not entirely unheard of for the state party to make endorsements ahead of primaries, especially when an incumbent is running for reelection. During the 2025 primary for the state superintendent, for example, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin endorsed state Superintendent Jill Underly for a second term.
Fisker noted the SSDC has nothing to do with the state party, and she said it was clear early that the sitting senators were planning to endorse a candidate.
“We thought we really had convinced them to wait,” Fisker said. “All it would have taken was them to wait for three or four months. We’re way out here from the election, and you know, the candidates would have self-selected at some point.”
Jacobson, surrounded by five Democratic senators, launched her candidacy the Monday after Gov. Tony Ever signed the new state budget, — just a few days ahead of any county party forums taking place.
Hendrickson said she received a heads up from Hesselbein that she would be endorsing Jacobson and the top Senate Democrat encouraged her to run for the Assembly instead. Hendrickson said she felt the decision for Jacobson to announce alongside the senators just ahead of the forums being held “was a move to pressure us to back up.”
“They’re not voters. They don’t live in this district,” Hendrickson said of the lawmakers. “This district is hungry for a candidate that’s from the area, that understands the deep rural part of this district and how hard we’re all struggling as communities because of the state budget and because of the decisions that Marklein’s making as the co-chair of the JFC.”
Participants at a forum for potential SD 17 candidates in Dodgeville included Corrine Hendrickson, Sam Rikkers, Lisa White, Matt Raobin and Rep. Jenna Jacobson. (Photo courtesy of Hendrickson)
Matt Raobin, owner of Brix Cider in Mount Horeb has decided against running for personal reasons, he said, but he described a similar experience in a Facebook post, saying that he reached out to members of the SSDC as he was considering a run.
“In that meeting, it quickly became clear that these are the people who choose the candidate, for better or worse. “We want to avoid a primary,” I heard repeated multiple times,” Raobin wrote, adding that he understood the desire to avoid a primary but also found it problematic.
“We are in a moment when the Democratic Party needs to reinvent itself. Approval ratings are low. Nationally, we’re taking beating after beating from a Republican trifecta and a hard right Supreme Court. The last thing the Democratic Party should be doing is taking steps to block out new voices from having a chance to be heard,” Raobin wrote. “Avoiding a primary means avoiding the hard work of renewal. It stifles creativity. It squashes out new ideas before they’ve had a chance to grow. It prevents us from testing a candidate’s true viability, and it heavily favors insiders over outsiders.”
The county parties pushed ahead with the forums, giving candidates and potential candidates a chance to introduce themselves to answer questions from the community.
“I’ve really not seen anything quite like this… we had people from six different counties who came to our forum in Hazel Green,” Fisker said. “It’s been really interesting and fun to see how much people want this… This is what democracy looks like. It should be up to them whether they want to run or not, and then, and then it’s up to us as voters to get out and vote for them in the primary and make our choice.”
White, who is continuing her campaign, said she understands that she is the “underdog” in the race, but thinks it will be worth it no matter the outcome. She said she hopes she is informing people along the way about the issues faced by the district.
“There’s no way I can lose if you look at the big picture,” White said. “How can you lose when you are bringing people in… that would have ordinarily tuned out.”
Senate District 5
In the southeast corner of the state, a similar situation has taken shape in Senate District 5.
The district has been represented by Hutton since 2022 but has changed since the last time he ran. It’s a purple district that represents portions of Milwaukee County, including West Allis and Wauwatosa, and Waukesha County, including Pewaukee, Brookfield and Elm Grove.
Weeks before Vining’s announcement, Brookfield businesswoman Sarah Harrison became the first to enter the race.
Harrison told the Wisconsin Examiner she was encouraged by people in her community to run for the seat — some even reached out to make sure she was still running after Vining’s announcement. She said there is excitement about the race for the 5th Senate District because it appears winnable for Democrats.
The self-described “data geek” said that as she considered whether to run, she looked at where Democrats had the strongest performances in the past and areas where Democrats could pick up votes and Democrats could grow more in parts of the district that cover Waukesha County. She said her strong “grassroots ties” there would help her connect with voters in areas that have long been represented by Republicans. She said she also brings her experience as a single mom, a business owner and someone who has worked with Fortune 50 and Fortune 500 companies.
“I still believe that I’m the best candidate for this seat,” Harrison said. Waukesha County residents, she said, “have been underrepresented for so long.”
Vining currently represents a third of the district in the Assembly. The other two Assembly districts are represented by Rep. Adam Neylon (R-Pewaukee) and Rep. Angelito Tenorio (D-West Allis).
Hutton hasn’t announced whether he’ll run again. He has raised over $5,600 this year, according to his July 2025 report, and has about $89,770 on hand. Campaign filings from July 2025 showed that Vining had raised about $3,000 from January through June and had about $22,000 on hand. Harrison had raised a little over $2,100.
Harrison said she felt heard in her initial conversations with the SSDC about running, but that it soon became clear that there wasn’t anything she could do to earn the support of the lawmakers. She said primaries should be about vetting the “best candidates and the best ideas.”
“We fought to end the gerrymandered maps so that voters could choose their representatives, and I respect that the SSDC wants to have a say,” Harrison said. “I won’t let that stop me from running. I’m a fighter.”
Harrison has run for office, running in 2022 for the Assembly in the seat once held by Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, who is now the first Democrat to announce a campaign for governor. She pulled in 43% of the vote in the Republican-leaning seat.
“It was drawn to be essentially unwinnable,” Harrison said.
Michalski lost his reelection bid in 2024 to Vining. When Vining made her own pitch for her Senate candidacy in July, she underscored her record of winning competitive races.
In 2024 with new legislative maps in place, Harrison ran for the Assembly again, this time against Rep. Adam Neylon of Pewaukee. She brought in 41% against the incumbent.
“I took on the work and the labor, and I ran two really good campaigns that were beneficial to folks up the ticket, beneficial to the communities. I did all of that at my own cost, in terms of money and time. I had some support from the party, but not a lot.” Harrison said. “To turn around and make this endorsement, it was disappointing.”
Harrison, who runs a data consulting company, said some of her top issues include ensuring local governments have sufficient funding and that people have access to affordable and accessible child care.
“We’re seeing that folks are hit hard by the need for local referendums because the state has not fully funded a lot of the things they’re requiring,” Harrison said, adding the 2023 law, which updated the way local governments received their shared revenue payment, was just “a toe in the right direction.”
When it comes to health and child care, she said “both of those impact working families and their ability to participate in the economy and to build a better life for their families.”
She said she would also want the state to accept the Medicaid expansion and work towards “making sure that folks are able to be seen [by a doctor] in a timely manner.” However, she acknowledged the new obstacles that will exist to making those changes under the Trump administration.
“I’m very concerned, especially with some of the changes at the national level that we at the state level are going to have to provide more of a safety net,” Harrison said.
As she continues her campaign, she has been doing “walk and talks,” getting out in the community to find out what’s on the minds of residents.
“A lot of people do not want an anointed candidate that was chosen, kind of, by folks who are seen as being insiders. They want to make that choice. They want to have that primary to vet the best candidate. They don’t want a candidate handed to them.”
“It absolutely does make it more challenging for me,” Harrison said of the senators’ involvement. “But it also shows that I’m not someone who’s going to be a yes man. I am going to stand up for what I believe is correct.”
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