The Wisconsin Senate wraps up its
regular business for 2026.
What passed, what didn't,
and what can we learn from the way
this Senate voted?
This is Inside Wisconsin Politics.
I'm WPR Capitol Bureau Chief Shawn
Johnson, here with WPR Capital
Reporter Anya Van Wagtendonk,
WPR Political Reporter Rich Kramer,
and PBS Wisconsin Senior Political
Reporter Zach Schultz.
The Wisconsin Senate wraps up its
regular business for 2026.
What passed, what didn't, and what
can we learn from the way this
Senate voted?
This is Inside Wisconsin Politics.
I'm WPR Capital Bureau Chief Shawn
Johnson, here with WPR Capitol
Reporter Anya Van Wachtendonk,
WPR Political Reporter Rich Kramer,
and PBS Wisconsin Senior Political
Reporter Zach Schultz.
Mm-hmm
Can you make sure to give us a cue
that mics are closed at the end so
that we can resume our
chit chat at the table and not look
super awkward in the close?
The Wisconsin Senate wraps up its
regular business for 2026.
What passed?
What didn't?
And what can we learn from the way
this Senate voted?
This is Inside Wisconsin Politics.
I'm WPR Capital Bureau Chief Shawn
Johnson, here with WPR
Capitol Reporter Anya
VanWaghtendonk, WPR Political
Reporter Rich Kramer, and
PBS Wisconsin Senior Political
Reporter Zach Schultz.
Hey everyone,
thanks for joining us.
So we were all set to
talk about how this session
of the Wisconsin Senate was
different than previous sessions.
And the Senate gave us lots to talk
about including as we're getting
ready to record news that the Senate
Majority Leader Devin Lemahue is
not going to seek reelection, which
in the world of the state Capitol,
as you all know, that is a pretty
big deal.
Zach. What can we take from
that given the way that the Senate
has been acting this week and how
big a deal is it in the Capitol?
It certainly felt like a week of
voting where people weren't worried
about the next election or the next
term.
There were questions of whether that
signaled Lemahue knew that his
majority position was in stake as
Republicans are worried about having
the Dems flip the Senate.
But I think the bigger picture to
look here is, we're gonna have a
new majority leader in the Senate, a
new speaker in the Assembly, and a
new governor. And the last time that
happened was 2011 with
Scott Walker and the
Fitzs running the show.
Big changes that time, we might see
big changes next session, too.
A wave election.
And there's people, of course, every
election is nationalized right now.
And there've already been people talking
about whether this would be a
nationalized democratic election.
Anya, you know that
Capitol building and you know how
much sway leaders carry.
How big of a deal is it to you that
Devin Lemahue, the leader that
you've covered in that Senate since
you've been here, is stepping down?
Yeah, I mean, like Zach said, the
session, the voting session only
a few days ago, was that two days
ago? I've lost track of time this
week.
There were a few bills that came
forward where there was a real
question of whether Devin would let
them get to the floor because he did
not have Republican votes.
And so there were kind of threats
being floated about what that would
mean for his leadership position.
And those bills passed with
necessary Democratic votes in order
to pass. And so then him stepping
down, it really is this kind of
signal that he whatever kind
of consequences might have come in
the caucus, he doesn't have to worry
about them anymore.
And Rich, you were covering the
session this week and that question
of whether or not to get democratic
votes is something that
everyone was talking about.
And Senator Lemme, you even had some
kind of not so veiled threats thrown
out from a member of his own caucus.
Don't do that, basically.
How unusual was this session week
in terms of bipartisanship,
frankly?
Pretty unusual.
I mean, to me, as someone who's
pretty new at covering state
politics, it feels a little strange
when getting
Democratic votes on a Republican
bill or Republican votes on a
Democratic bill is a big deal.
It seems like that would be
normal, but that's
not the case.
And that was
more of a sign of what you all have
been talking about, that Things
are changing there.
It feels like things are changing in
the Senate.
They used to have a super majority
not that long ago.
Then we got new maps after the
Wisconsin Supreme Court's liberal
majority struck down, ones that were
drawn by Republicans back in
2011.
And then we had an election under
those maps. So that super majority
went down to 18 Republican
senators.
And that threat goes to
this thing called the rule of
17. It's an informal rule.
But the idea is that if
you're in the majority, You pass
bills with majority support.
You don't even really consider them
if you don't have those 17 votes.
But we saw examples where
Demond and Lemahue went ahead and
passed them anyway with Democratic
support.
And that's a very informal
rule as far as the workings of the
Capitol go. I mean, it's not in the
Senate rules, it's certainly not in
law, but it is an
internal Republican caucus thing.
Well, Sean, bring us back to
Fitz, when Fitzgerald ran the
Senate, his philosophy,
I'm sure you recall, was you don't
go to the floor unless you have the
vote. So clearly Lemmy, following
that pattern, knew what he was doing
when he came to the floor with those
bills.
He sounded a few times too, Senator
Lemahue has. I mean, they did it
with the big local government
funding bill a couple of years ago.
They needed Democrat support to get
that through.
There was the budget this
last time, this very bipartisan deal
between Speaker
Voss and Governor
Evers, and that needed Democratic
votes.
So I haven't seen Devin Lemahoe
adhere to that rule
in the way that Scott Fitzgerald did
when Scott Fitzgerald.
You know, was leader for a long
time. He was more like, Scott
Fitzgerald was more of like a, a
Robin Voss kind of leader.
Been there forever, kind of
ruled with an iron fist in the
Senate.
Didn't get pushed around on too
much.
When he did go to Democrats for
votes, it was sparingly.
Well, and that rule is a lot easier
to maintain if you have a lot of
wiggle room, so if you have a
supermajority, as Rich mentioned,
you can lose some of your members
and it's not a big deal.
But as the margins have gotten
smaller and smaller, and now
Democrats are talking about trying
to flip the Senate, and I think they
stand a pretty good chance of doing
so, maybe they're also kind of
seeing the writing on the wall that
being a leader would be a whole lot
harder if you had just a very slim
majority or no majority at all.
So let's unpack a couple of the
bills where this did end up being a
factor this week.
You had this online sports
betting bill. It would legalize
online sports bettting in Wisconsin
if the servers for
that betting are located on
tribal lands.
Rich, what were the arguments on
that one in the Senate this week?
Well, so, generally the Republican
opposition argument was
that we shouldn't be
expanding legalized gambling
in Wisconsin.
It causes addiction, it hurts
people, et cetera.
That was the bulk of the GOP
argument.
Democrats were saying,
well, it's already here, you know,
sports betting online is happening
on the margins, on the outside, on
edges, and
this way the state can have some
regulations in place.
And democrats like that
the tribes get to play a role
in this and that the money is going
to tribes and also the state
rather than major companies
like draft kings or
fan dual.
The details on this one are
pretty significant, I think.
I mean, if you've watched sporting
events, you see ads
for FanDuel or
DraftKings just everywhere
now, which you did not used to see
in the very recent past.
Those companies don't like this bill
though, because it would,
an industry group said that they
would have to
share 60% of their revenue.
With the tribes and these companies
are saying we just won't do business
here in Wisconsin if you do it that
way.
That is not an argument that I heard
opponents making against
this though.
We heard very strong arguments
against Anya from
social conservatives when it comes
to gambling.
Yeah, so there's the argument that,
again, there's kind of a social
problem with gambling.
But then also, there is a real kind
of messy legal situation
here, where it's a mix of state,
federal, and tribal law, all of
which is at play,
and then some of which has not been
tested. And so one of the pushbacks
from, for example, the Wisconsin
Institute for Law and Liberty, the
conservative law firm, is that
this creates an unconstitutional
kind of ethnic monopoly,
giving the tribes the monopoly, even
though the compacts that the tribe
says that they are in charge of
gambling in the state.
And so those arguments are kind of
at play. And so I think we're going
to see quite a bit of legal
push-pull over how to
implement this.
Well, it's still not even clear if
Governor Evers is going to sign this
bill. That's right. His statements
just yesterday said he wants all
the tribes on board and that so far
that is not the case.
There are some tribes that are
out ahead of the rest of them when
it comes to casino profits and
revenues. And there are some some of
the ones in northern Wisconsin where
they have casinos but they're not
that profitable and not nearly to
the scale that the rest of them are.
So it may take the tribes working
together to actually get Governor
Ebers to sign off on this.
So all of this may go for
a bill that gets vetoed saying we
need to work on it for next year.
And, you know, we're focused on the
Senate here and how they were acting
different with this, you know 2026
election on the rise.
And Tony Evers is absolutely acting
different now because he knows he's
not gonna run again. So he can
basically look at every bill and
say, is this really what I want?
If not, let it go,
veto, move on.
You know, keeping on that sports
theme, we had another big bill this
week with name, image and likeness
or NIL.
Tell us about that. You're a huge
sports fan, I know.
I just, I care so d-
I just, I care so deeply about college
sports.
I care deeply about political
policy as it affects college
sports, and so I got to learn all
about this. So NIL deals, this
comes out of a 2021 sort
of change in how college athletes
are treated. They're no longer
amateurs. They can get paid for
their work, and they can kind of
wrangle these deals according to how
popular their sport is and how good
they are at their sports.
And so what that has led to is
athletes being able to transfer
schools in search of more lucrative
deals. In a way that as I
understand it, as someone who does
not follow the Badgers terribly
closely, has not been great for
Badgers football in particular, and
I might be getting some knowing
glances from the actual football
fans among us, but so
what this bill would do is
put 14 and a half million dollars
towards UW-Madison for athletic
facilities fees in order for the
school to have a pot of money to
make these deals with players.
So the idea is that they'd be able
to bring in top football
and basketball talent in
particular.
This passed out of the assembly
almost unanimously.
And then it became this big open
question at the Senate because it
was a Lemahue bill, but then he
was losing a ton of support within
his caucus.
And so the question up until it,
basically the day of the floor vote
was will he spike his own bill
in order to maintain the
rule of 17, or will he go to
Democrats for support?
And there was some pretty dramatic
stuff on the floor that happened.
It passed very narrowly, but it
passed because of Democrats.
Rich, that was a very close
one on the Senate, as I recall,
like just a one-move margin.
So you talk about needing Democratic
votes in every sense of the world,
you know, Devin Lemahue needed that.
What was that one like?
It was a voice phone essentially.
I should say it wasn't a voice for
it was a roll call vote But there
wasn't lot of debate or any
that I remember in the Senate But
just kind of looking pulling
back a little bit. I wanted to say
that it's interesting to see
Republicans any Republicans
Send more money to UW Madison
just basically overall
They have been
pretty distrustful of the university
on all kinds of
fronts. So to see as many,
you know, send them more money as
there were.
What's interesting about this bill
and the way that it works is that
it allows for that money to
be transferred. And the university
sold it as, we're already getting
money for basketball and football
players. But freeing up this money
allows us to share it with our
Olympian sports.
So the swimmers, the rowers,
volleyball, very successful women's
hockey programs, saying we may have
to shutter some of those if we don't
have that flexibility for a little
more money.
But what it does is it solidifies
the lack of transparency for
all these contracts.
I interviewed UW Athletic Director
Chris McIntosh a couple months ago
and I asked him about, you know,
why don't we see more of what these
people are getting paid?
They are now professionals.
They are contracts that are signed
between the university and
their agents.
And he said, well we can't because
if our competitors know what we're
paying our potential quarterback or
our point guard, then they can come
in and offer them more and steal
them away from us.
The question becomes, there were
some Dems who raised this during the
debate, is What happens if this
lack of transparency for the open
records gets applied to coaches
contracts?
What happens that there's other
deals for outside support that all
of a sudden get hidden under this
idea of, well, we're
anti-competitive. We can't let
anyone know how much we're paying
anyone.
And there's a lot of concerns out
there. And we saw, I think, Senator
Hesselbein, the minority leader of
the Dems, say, if the Dem's have
power next year, they would
definitely come back and revisit
that particular angle.
So it's definitely something to
watch for, how it's applied.
I think most people are supportive
of athletes getting paid for the
work that they're doing, but there's
a question of where's this money
coming from and what does the public
know about this since it is public
support and full disclosure, we're
also UW employees.
And our salaries are public, and
that is an open record.
Are we getting an A.L.?
I'm waiting for mine.
Yeah, me too.
So the Senate adjourned
this week.
This assembly has been done forever
now, a month ago, which feels a long
time in legislative politics.
They like to do this under Speaker
Voss, or Speaker Vos likes to do.
Get done first, set
the agenda, make everybody kind
of go on your timeline.
And so then everything that they
pass is either going to get passed
in the Senate in that form, or
it's dead.
And one of the bills that did die
was this Republican data
center bill would regulate data
centers.
Speaker Voss very hopefully had
a forum on the last day of Senate
session where he had some
opinions about the Senate not
taking up his data center.
Bill, Anya, what did he have to say?
Yeah, I mean, this was basically the
closest that the legislature came to
having any type of regulatory bill
for data centers, which, of course,
are kind of exploding across the
state. And the fact that it did
not reach the floor of the Senate
means that this session has passed
without basically any guardrails,
any new guardrail coming on.
But this was a Republican bill.
Voss championed it. And it
essentially put certain guardrailes,
especially around energy use of data
centers. So for example, they would
have to recycle the water that they
use. If they wanted to use renewable
energy sources, they would have to
site those on the properties of
the data centers so you couldn't
rely on community solar
panels or whatever.
And the data center would have to be
responsible for any upgrades to
the energy grid.
So it was just this kind of intro
attempt at regulating
this. It was primarily a Republican
bill. It had a few Democratic votes
in the assembly, but most Democrats
said this is rushed.
We need to be sort of more
thoughtful about how we are
regulating data centers.
And then the Senate didn't even
bring it to the floor.
But Voss talked about that
really being, as he thought,
an issue for Senate Republicans,
that if they don't kind of lead on
this issue, that it might cost them
votes in November.
Yeah, it's rare to hear
a speaker come out against
a majority leader from his own party
the week that he's still in session
with that kind of criticism.
I think sort of the
secret was sort of out on
Tuesday.
I mean, we didn't know, know that
Devin Lemonhue was not going to seek
reelection, but there was talk about
it. There was speculation about it,
people are looking at the Senate
math and they're thinking about it
Well it changes a lot when
No one has to worry about
re-election next year.
Evers, Vos, and Lemahue can all
speak in ways that we have not heard
or we have not heard them speak
publicly. We've heard them off the
record or heard from their staffers.
But I think this bill in particular
still has the next
election cycle written all over it
as Vos pointed out because it's
a major issue in the gubernatorial
campaign. There are different
Democrats running for governor.
They've talked about freezes and
the PSC and rate commissions and
how data centers work.
I asked all the candidates about
this when I interviewed them all in
December. And there were a lot of
like dainty footsteps about how to
approach this, because they knew it
was a hot button issue, but they
were still trying to figure out how
far could they go, where would the
public be ahead of them?
And they're still figuring this out
because right now it doesn't fall on
a clear Republican-Democratic
divide, which is why I think the
Senate didn't really know what to do
with it. I think if Lemahue had a
strong point of view, he would have
brought up the floor and let Democrats
help pass it if he thought that was
the way to go, but there's not a
clear advantage at this time.
And Tom Tiffany as governor is
clearly campaigning on this issue as
well. So this is definitely one for
the fall.
Yeah, I just wanted to follow up on
what Zach said.
The recent Marquette University
polling shows, of course, people are
very opposed to data centers.
But even pollster Charles Franklin
said it doesn't appear that
the political parties have picked
their lane on it, really.
So it's kind of.
Okay, so this was the last regular
session day.
They adjourned pursuant to SJR
1. That's how you know it's real.
But they could, in theory,
come back on a couple topics.
They're still talking about a
property tax and education special
session, talk about a
gerrymandering session.
Real quick, are these things
gonna happen?
Zach, you go first.
The only reason there's still a
prayer that any of this could happen
is because everyone's leaving and
it's legacy time for all three of
those people.
Predict the future for us.
Okay, Anya, how about you?
Well, there will be a special
session on gerrymandering no matter
what the question is whether will
they gavel in and gavel out in a few
seconds or will they actually take
up some kind of a bill?
Okay, I'm gonna say definitely gavel
in, gavel out on gerrymandering.
That's my firm take on that one.
And we can replay this later.
Absolutely, put some money on it
maybe. I think it's an unusual
enough, a bipartisan enough
session on the other stuff
with property taxes
and education funding that they may
have real incentives to
reach a deal and not have to be
talking to voters about why didn't
you address these issues?
So maybe that's enough to get them
all there.
Thanks all for joining us
on this, our first episode of
Inside Wisconsin Politics.
Be sure to follow us on
pbswisconsin.org, wpr.org
YouTube, or wherever you
get your podcasts.
Thank you.
We could do a couple ticks of hang.
Hey, sure.
Yeah, you got it.
For the table.
You see this?
Oh yeah, I like it.
I took a picture earlier.
Oh shit.
Don't you mean, oh shoot?
The Wisconsin Senate wraps up its
regular business for 2026.
What passed, what didn't,
and what can we learn from the way
this Senate voted?
This is Inside Wisconsin Politics.
I'm WPR Capital Bureau Chief, Sean
Johnson, here with WPR
Capitol Reporter, Anya Van
Wagtendonk, WPR Political
Reporter, Rich Kramer, and
PBS Wisconsin Senior Political
Reporter Zach Schultz.
Hey everyone.
The Wisconsin Senate wraps up its
regular business for 2026.
What passed?
What didn't?
And what can we learn from the way
this Senate voted?
This is Inside Wisconsin Politics,
I'm WPR Capital Bureau Chief Shawn
Johnson, here with WPR Capitol
Reporter Anya Van Wagtendonk,
WPR Political Reporter Rich Kramer,
and PBS Wisconsin Senior
Political Reporter Zach Schultz.
Hey everyone.
So how about Devon Lemmehue?
Batman.
I think he retired.
Oh, man.
So soggy
looking.
We're still rolling.
With or without goatee.
Glad the map's in focus, even if
he's not.