Welcome back, Wisconsin. I'm Maggie Dawn. You're listening to the Maggie Dawn show here on the Civic Media Radio Network. We got a
Barnburner of a show for you folks today picking it off with political editor for Civic Media Dan Schaefer creator and author of the recombobulation area. Dan is put together an absolutely comprehensive voter guide for each and every one of you. You can find that at civic media.us slash voter guide. It breaks down all of the state assembly and Senate districts that you will find on your ballot this November 5th or maybe even today. If you have
a chance to happen to be early voting. What's useful here and so important about this, of course, is that all of our legislative maps were redrawn following the 2020 census. And so for the first time in over a decade, Wisconsinites have fairer maps. And that means that a number of both state assembly and Senate districts are now up for grabs when they had been gerrymandered to benefit Republicans in the past. We've talked about two of those races so far.
61 between Luan Bird and Bob Donovan with razor thin margins as well as district 51 between Elizabeth Groey and Todd Novak again razor thin margins. But let's move up to the Green Bay area, Dan. And again, thanks for joining all of us today. This is district 89 Ryan Spade versus Pat Snyder. Tell us what's going on in district 89.
Yeah, absolutely. So this is, you know, there's been a number of districts that changed pretty significantly following the Wisconsin Supreme Court's decision to strike down the previous maps. And one of those is district 89 here. And I think the candidate or the Democratic candidate running here, Ryan Spaudi serves in the is an assistant district attorney in the Brown County district attorney's office.
This change, this district used to include kind of the western shore of the actual Green Bay going up to Marinette. Now it's pretty concentrated within Brown County. So it is much more competitive district, you know, in in the 89th year Mandela Barnes won this district by less than 200 votes. So it's a very, very close district overall.
He is running against Patrick Buckley who has some experience. This is one of the things that I noticed, you know, this year for many of the assembly candidates in these toss up districts.
I think Republicans had to work a little harder to find candidates this year and found people that have a little bit more experience. And so Buckley in this, in this example here, he was the chairman of the Brown County board since 2010.
And would serve for 15 years in the Green Bay police department. So, you know, this is this is going to be a very competitive race here. It's definitely a toss up. And I think that this along with another toss up district also in kind of the Green Bay Brown County area.
Those are two of the most important seats. And I guess, you know, and I was up in Green Bay last week at Kamala Harris's rally in the city there. And I think there is a lot of enthusiasm among Democrats, especially because they have competitive maps there for the first time in a long time.
So you have district district in the 89th and then right next door in the 88th where there are two very, very closely competitive districts that could go a long way towards determining which party has the majority.
Fascinating, Dan. I'm going to be up all night. I just know it. There's so many election results to keep track of. Let's move on to the Shaboyagan area. We got district 26 with Joe Shehan and Amy Binsfield.
Tell us what's going on in this district.
Yeah, so Shaboyagan was really a prime example of how the state was gerrymandered previously previously. There was a line right down the middle of the city that kind of split it into two light red districts and kind of denied representation to any Democrats there.
Well, now all of Shaboyagan is contained within one state assembly district and it is a toss up race. And it's a toss up race that I think has been kind of shifting in favor of the Democrat in this one.
Joe Shehan seems like a pretty strong candidate for this district. He worked as the superintendent of the Shaboyagan area school district for about 17 years. Most recently also worked as the executive director of the Shaboyagan County Economic Development Corporation.
So he has very strong ties to this district and then Amy Binsfield. She's a first term Republican state legislator. I'd heard some reports going on as well that there were some kind of infighting in the Shaboyagan County GOP over this race.
So I think this is a real opportunity for Democrats to flip a seat and for for people in Shaboyagan to have an opportunity for representation in ways they did not under previous maps.
One of the things just a small digression here Dan that I'm so excited to see is that there are so many more competitive districts both on the assembly and the Senate side.
And whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, what that means is those elected officials will be more attentive to you. They actually have to run and earn your vote.
And so as constituents, whether you're an independent swing voter, maybe I don't vote Republican, Democrat, whatever, you're going to get more attention in all of these districts.
Let's see if we can squeeze a couple more in Dan district 30 up in Hudson close to the Twin Cities. We got Alison Page and Shannon Zimmerman. Tell us more.
This is an interesting one. This is, you know, definitely a leans red a little bit, but this has been kind of moving closer to competitive territory because it is in the Twin Cities media market.
And so I'm with this one. I'm wondering if there's going to be a little bit of a Tim Walls effect. Let's say because of the fact that this is a district that is, you know, it's about a 20 minute drive from St. Paul, right from the edge of this district from Hudson to St. Paul.
And so I do wonder if this will have an effect where, you know, Tim Walls, a popular governor in Minnesota, you know, people may see him a whole lot in the media market up there.
So this might be trending blue in a number of ways. And then Republican Shannon Zimmerman incumbent in this race, he's served here since 2017.
He's on the joint finance committee and the joint finance committee has taken some really controversial votes in recent years. So there are a number of ways, you know, whether it's, you know, school funding, childcare, healthcare, Medicaid expansion, marijuana legalization, all sorts of funding.
PFAS funding, you know, all sorts of up and down the line. There's a lot of really controversial votes that that body has taken in recent years. So I do wonder if this one might be a little bit closer than some might expect given the dynamics there and the Democratic challenger.
She has a great resume too. She was the CEO of Western Wisconsin Health for 13 years and served on the River Falls school district board in the area there.
Thanks so much, Dan. We're going to have to save a couple of these toss-up Senate districts for another appearance. Folks, you're always going to want to check out what we got coming up next on the Maggie Doncho.
You can find out about all these races by going to civicmedia.us slash voter guide up next. I've got Yari Akino because it sounds like change. She's from Emily's list. We're going to talk about other key state elections.
Keep it locked. Thanks so much, Dan. Here on the Civic Media Radio Network.
Thanks for watching.
