Assembly Democrat Chief Complains About Party Politics to Kick-off 2025 Session

Democrat Accuses Republicans of Partisanship...

Wisconsin lawmakers are not starting the new year with a new look at sharing government at the Capitol in Madison.

Assembly Democratic leader Greta Neubauer on Thursday blasted Republicans over what she says were decisions to politically stack statehouse committees.

“Assembly Republican Leadership has chosen to begin the legislative session in a highly partisan fashion, reducing Democratic positions on the vast majority of committees despite the people of Wisconsin choosing to replace ten incumbent Republican legislators with Democrats in the last election,” Neubauer said in a statement.

The new legislature will take its oath of office Monday, and Democrats will have more seats in both the Wisconsin Assembly and the State Senate. But they will remain in the minority.

Still Neubauer’s statement made it seem as if she was expecting a more shared-Assembly for the next two years.

“I hope my Republican colleagues will choose to shift course and join Democrats in putting the people of Wisconsin over partisan politics in the coming legislative session,” she added.

Wisconsin Republicans will go from having a 30 seat majority, 64-34, to having just a nine seat majority, 54-45.

The Wisconsin Senate will also stay in Republican hands, but barely. Republicans ended the 2024 session with a supermajority 20-10 advantage. They will have just a three seat, 18-15 advantage.

As opposed to talking about sharing government now, Senate Democratic leader Dianne Hesselbein said in an end-of-the-year interview that she is looking forward to taking control of the Senate in two years.

“State Senate Democrats were out to win five seats, and we won all five,” Hesselbein said in an interview with Spectrum News 1. “So I have hope moving forward that with these Fair Maps we're going to be able to take more seats in two years. And then I'll be the Senate Majority Leader.”

Hesselbein and Neubauer continue to say they want to “work and deliver results for the people of Wisconsin,” but they’re not saying specifically what that entails.

Democrats at the Capitol have, however, echoed Gov. Tony Evers’ priorities of spending more on public schools, the University of Wisconsin System, and his years-long list of ideas like a medicaid expansion or legal marijuana.

The new session begins January 6th. The governor is set to deliver his budget to lawmakers in February. The Assembly and the Senate will then work on a spending plan of their own, and deliver it some time in the summer.