MADISON, Wis. (CN) — In back-to-back floor sessions on Tuesday, both chambers of the GOP-controlled Wisconsin Legislature passed voting maps proposed by the Democratic governor, adding a wrinkle to a prolonged, contentious partisan battle over redistricting in the politically divided swing state.
The maps in the bill first passed by the Senate in an 18-14 vote — five Republicans joined the Democrats opposing it — were submitted by Governor Tony Evers in a high-stakes lawsuit over redistricting currently underway at the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Less than two hours later, the State Assembly concurred in a 63-33 vote, with one Democrat, Sylvia Ortiz-Velez of Milwaukee, joining Republicans to pass it.
In the Senate, Democrats including Mark Spreitzer of Beloit objected to the Republicans’ bill because it featured a 165-page amendment liberal lawmakers had not seen until after today's floor session started, which scrapped language about a nonpartisan redistricting process and replaced it with language adopting the governor’s maps.
The amendment also specifically holds that the new maps would only apply to elections starting this fall and not any recall or special elections before then, Spreitzer noted. This would include a recall effort Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, a Republican, could face from the right flank of his party, in part because of his opposition to impeaching the administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission over her supposed role in false conspiracy theories involving the 2020 election.
Republicans rushed passage of the amended bill as a last-ditch effort to avoid the outcome of the lawsuit before the state supreme court, and without submitting the amendment to public hearings, Senate Democrats said.
“What are you hiding from the public for?” Spreitzer said on the Senate floor.
Multiple Senate Republicans expressed that, especially given the current liberal disposition of the high court and resistance from Democrats, they had little choice but to pass the governor’s maps without changes.
“We kind of have a gun to our head,” said Duey Stroebel, a Republican senator from Saukville.
The only lawmaker to speak about the maps bill in the Assembly was Vos, who, referring to the high-court lawsuit, said he hoped passing the bill meant "today is the end of a long, expensive journey for the taxpayers of Wisconsin."
He played down rumblings from Democrats worried that passing the maps was a back-door ploy for Republicans to challenge them in court.
Evers did not immediately respond Tuesday afternoon to a request for comment on passage of his maps and whether he plans to enact them. As late last week he indicated he would be open to doing so.
Republicans and Democrats in the Badger State have been embroiled in their latest redistricting fight since last August when the state supreme court took up a lawsuit over legislative maps adopted in 2022 many considered an extension of maps drawn after the 2010 census that were heavily gerrymandered in Republicans’ favor. Republicans have held safe majorities in the Legislature since 2011 despite Democrats' recent successes in statewide elections in 2018 and 2022.
The supreme court that enshrined Wisconsin's maps in 2022 had a 4-3 conservative majority, but the election of Justice Janet Protasiewicz last year handed liberals the majority for the first time in more than a decade.
Republicans pushed Protasiewicz to recuse from the latest redistricting lawsuit — filed by a progressive Madison law firm one day after she was sworn in — because she called the 2022 maps “rigged” on the campaign trail, but the justice declined to do so.
The court narrowed the scope of the latest lawsuit to focus only on whether the disputed maps satisfied the Wisconsin Constitution’s contiguity requirements. Then, after hearing arguments in November, the liberal majority tossed the maps as unconstitutional just before Christmas, drawing the ire of Republican lawmakers and the court’s conservative bloc.
Part of the court’s order held that parties to the lawsuit, including intervenors, would submit proposed maps for the court’s consideration while the Legislature tried to pass maps through the traditional process. The justices also hired two outside consultants — paying them $450 per hour for their time, according to court records — to provide a report on the maps submitted to the court.
Last month Republican legislators tried to pass Evers' maps with changes that would protect incumbent Republicans the maps would force to run against each other. Evers didn't bite, and he vetoed the maps on Jan. 30.
The hired consultants’ report arrived on Feb. 8. It advised the justices that, from a social science perspective, maps submitted by legislative Republicans and the conservative law firm Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty were “partisan gerrymanders” and should not be considered. The rest of the maps, all of which would notably improve Democrats’ electoral odds, were similar on most criteria and could be adopted, the consultants said, though they stopped short of declaring any of them constitutional.
Legislative Republicans have since asked the court either to strike the consultants’ report from the record or to let lawmakers subpoena both of them. The court accepted briefing on the motion until 4 p.m. on Tuesday.
Evers' maps, according to the hired consultants and other redistricting experts, would improve Democrats' chances in legislative contests but still give Republicans an advantage, albeit a more modest one than the maps the justices declared unconstitutional.
The lawsuit the supreme court is currently handling has nothing to do with Wisconsin's congressional voting maps, only those for the Legislature. But intervening petitioners in the previous redistricting lawsuit backed by Democratic Party-aligned lawyers from the Elias Law Group in Washington asked the justices to get rid of the congressional maps as well in mid-January. The justices have not indicated whether they will grant that relief.
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