2024 Wisconsin State Legislature Voter Guide: Senate District 8

Democrat Jodi Habush Sinykin faces Republican incumbent Duey Stroebel in the race for Senate District 8 in the 2024 election.

This is part of The Recombobulation Area and Civic Media’s 2024 Wisconsin State Legislature Voter Guide. Read the first part of the series, “New Board, New Game,” here. See the full district-by-district breakdown of the Wisconsin State Senate here. See the comprehensive Voter Guide here.

D: Jodi Habush Sinykin

R: Duey Stroebel*

This might be the single most interesting race in the Wisconsin State Legislature happening this year. This is a district won by both Tony Evers and Ron Johnson, the only such district in the State Senate on the ballot this cycle. 

State Sen. Duey Stroebel of Saukville is essentially the incumbent here, but he has long represented District 20, which, under old maps, stretched from Ozaukee County north to the eastern shores of Lake Winnebago. Now, he’ll be running in a district that makes much more sense, pulling together much of Ozaukee County, and other suburbs to the immediate north and northwest of Milwaukee. The District 8 incumbent is Republican Dan Knodl, who instead of running against Stroebel in a primary, chose instead to run for Assembly.

Stroebel has been a long-time cog in the Walker-Vos GOP machine. He has served in the State Senate for nearly a decade, following four years in the Assembly from 2011 to 2015. He has been a member of the Joint Committee on Finance since 2019, currently serving as Vice Chair. He’s also the Chair of the Committee on Government Relations. 

When in the Assembly, he chose not to run for re-election in 2014, choosing instead to run for an open seat in Congress following the retirement of Tom Petri. But Stroebel lost in the primary, finishing third behind Joe Leibham and eventual winner Glenn Grothman. Stroebel was then elected to the State Senate in the early 2015 special election for Grothman’s seat. Since, he has run unopposed in every election, not seeing a primary or general election challenge in 2016 nor 2020. This will be the first competitive race he’s run in nearly a decade, and he’ll be doing so in a very different district than the one he’s represented — one that has shifted significantly to the left in recent election cycles. 

The city of Cedarburg, for example — previously in District 20, in District 8 under new maps — became the first WOW county municipality to be won by a Democrat in a presidential election since the 1990s when Joe Biden won a majority there in 2020. The city of Whitefish Bay, part of this district along with other north shore suburbs, has been zooming to the left, going from a slight Republican advantage in the 2012 gubernatorial election to voting more than 70% for Tony Evers a decade later. Stroebel, no moderate by any stretch of the imagination, campaigning in places like Whitefish Bay is going to be a bit of an adventure. 

Stroebel’s opponent in this race is Jodi Habush Sinykin, who is running again after nearly pulling off an upset in April 2023. In that race, a special election to fill the seat previously held by Republican Alberta Darling, Habush Sinykin came within less than 2% of flipping the district blue, a strong performance in a district that the math showed to be GOP+12, at the time.

Habush Sinykin is an attorney who has specialized in environmental law, particularly on water issues (she was part of the group that sued over Foxconn’s planned diversion of Great Lakes water). She and her husband own a textile manufacturing company based in Janesville, and she is also the daughter of Bob Habush of Habush, Habush & Rottier fame. She’s viewed as a very strong challenger in this race.

Expect millions of dollars to be spent on this campaign. It is going to be close, and could go a long way toward determining which party will win the majority in 2026. It will also serve as a true bellwether on how the crucial WOW county suburbs, Ozaukee in particular, are shifting.

CNalysis: TOSS UP

• Proj. margin: D+1

Modeled 2022 outcome: R+6.0

Previous coverage:

• Feb. 2023: ‘Digging into the race for Wisconsin’s 8th Senate District—the OTHER big race in Tuesday’s primary’ (Milwaukee Record)
• March 2023: ‘PODCAST: A conversation with Jodi Habush Sinykin, Democratic candidate in the 8th Senate District’ (The Recombobulation Area)
• April 2023: ‘Did gerrymandering help give Wisconsin Republicans a victory in the 8th Senate District?’ (The Recombobulation Area)
• Feb. 2024: ‘Democrat Jodi Habush Sinykin considering another run for State Senate in District 8 under new maps’ (The Recombobulation Area)
• March 2024: ‘Senator blocks task force on missing and murdered African American women and girls’ (Civic Media)

More: Jodi Habush Sinykin on the Civic Media airwaves