The Recombobulation Area is a 21-time Milwaukee Press Club award-winning opinion column and online publication founded by Milwaukee journalist Dan Shafer.
This article was part of the extended column, “8 Takeaways from the 2026 Election in Wisconsin,” which was first available for paid subscribers on Nov. 7.
Sixteen years is a long time.
Republicans have controlled the Wisconsin State Legislature for 16 years. The last fork-in-the-road election for the state came in 2010, when Republicans had their own wave election, forever altering the trajectory of this great state — for the worse. With this election, Democrats have finally slammed the door shut on this detestable era.
It took so much from so many for so long, but Democrats finally delivered a new majority.
We spend so much time and attention on elections in the Wisconsin State Legislature here at The Recombobulation Area because of how enormously consequential it is in Wisconsin. You could make the argument that this is the most powerful brand of government in the state. This is what sets policy, passes budgets, and passes bills. There was a reason so many called Tony Evers a great “goalie”; it’s because with a GOP-controlled legislature, he could not really advance an agenda of his own — certainly not with the extreme and obstructionist group of Republicans running things.
But now, Crowley will have the opportunity to do what Evers did not — play some offense. In an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Greta Neubauer, the Assembly Speaker-in-waiting, said, “We’re going to be ambitious. We’ve been waiting a long time for this moment…There is a lot to do, and we are going to get started right away.”
We’ll certainly be taking a closer look at the details of what exactly that means in the coming months, but for now, let’s take a closer look at the election results — because they are remarkable.
In the Senate, Democrats needed to pick up just two seats in order to win control of the chamber, and were targeting three. They flipped all three — all by significant margins.
In two open seats in southeastern Wisconsin, each of the Democratic candidates won by double-digit margins. In District 5, Robyn Vining won by a 14-point margin, and in District 21, Trevor Jung won by 13.4%. In District 17, in the southwestern corner of the state in the ever-swingy Driftless region, Jenna Jacobson unseated longtime Republican incumbent Howard Marklein, winning by 7.6%.
Senate Dems even came within striking distance of flipping a district that Trump won by nearly 14 points in 2024, where Democrat Charly Ray came within less than six points of defeating Republican Erik Severson in the open 25th in the far northeast corner of the state.
After the 2022 election, Republicans had a two-third supermajority in the state Senate. But in 2024, despite it being a more red-leaning year, Democrats flipped four seats, putting themselves in range to take the majority this year. They succeeded — and then some. In two years and in eight contested races, Senate Democrats are undefeated.
In the Assembly, flipping the chamber always seemed like a tougher task. There were more seats needed to flip, and unlike the Senate, fewer incumbents were resigning at the end of their terms. Several state representatives — Todd Novak, Patrick Snyder, Shannon Zimmerman, Bob Donovan — had outrun the top of the ticket many times before.
In our initial preview of the State Assembly, we listed three as “Toss Up” (in Harris-won districts) and three as “Lean R” (in Trump-won districts), each with a Republican incumbent seeking re-election. The two Republican-held open seats — District 21, in southeastern Milwaukee County, and District 53, in Neenah/Menasha — were in our “Lean D” category, since incumbency would not be a factor there.
So, those were the eight seats in play — the eight potential pick-ups for Democrats, all at varying degrees of difficulty. In the end, Assembly Democrats swept each of these races — a remarkable achievement.
And in the end, none of them even really came down to the wire. Some of them were blowouts. Becky Nichols flipped the 53rd by a nearly 16-point margin. Ben Gruber finally took down Todd Novak, winning by almost 11%. Ben Brist beat Bob Donovan by more than 12%. Brandy Tollefson won the 88th by 8.6%. John Kroll won the 85th by 8.2%. Jeremiah Fredrickson won the 92nd by 6.8%. Kevin Knoke won the 30th by 6%. And in the 21st — in what might be the most insane result of the night in the Assembly — Dan Bukiewicz, the Democratic mayor of Oak Creek, won a Republican-held seat by a whopping 25-point margin.
The closer races came in blue-trending suburban districts in southeastern Wisconsin, like the 82nd in Waukesha, which saw the closest result of the night with Republican Bryson Reyes winning by just 2.4%, and in the 63rd, where Democrat Eddie Phanichkul (who joined our Election Night livestream!) came within 7% of Republican Robert Wittke in Racine County and the city of Franklin, a district that has gone for Republicans by more than 12% in every statewide race this decade.
Across the board, it was just an incredibly impressive showing for Assembly Democrats.
Greta Neubauer, who is now in line to be the next Assembly Speaker, talked about a piece of their recruitment strategy in some of these especially competitive races on a recent podcast with The Recombobulation Area. They looked for people who are “deeply rooted” in their communities and “known” to people in their districts. This has meant “educators and coaches, small business owners, public safety, local electeds,” said Neubauer.
This was in part designed to help combat the inevitable campaign attack ads, she said. The megadonor funding at the top of the ticket for Tom Tiffany was also present downballot, and the type of misleading or outright fictitious ads that the super PACs from Diane Hendricks and the Uihleins were putting out.
“We know that in communities where our candidates are well-known, misinformation doesn’t spread in the same way,” she said. “When I was on doors for Joe (Sheehan) two years ago, we had people say, they’re running these ads against Joe, but I already know Joe and that’s not who he is. And that’s the same thing we’re seeing now with Jeremiah Fredrickson, who owns a fish farm, or Kevin Knoke, who was an educator for 30 years. People just do not believe the ads they’re seeing because they actually have a reference point already on these candidates.”
This turned out to be an effective strategy, en route to winning a majority for only the second time in 32 years, and, with 53 seats, the Assembly’s largest Democratic majority since 1992.
See more of The Recombobulation Area’s election coverage here:
Dan Shafer is an independent journalist from Milwaukee who writes and publishes The Recombobulation Area. He worked with Civic Media from 2024 to 2026. He’s written for The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Heartland Signal, Belt Magazine, WisPolitics, and Milwaukee Record. He previously worked at Seattle Magazine, Seattle Business Magazine, the Milwaukee Business Journal, Milwaukee Magazine, and BizTimes Milwaukee. He’s won 24 Milwaukee Press Club Excellence in Journalism Awards. He’s on Twitter at @DanRShafer.
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