As Wisconsin Democrats eye ‘trifecta’ wins in 2026 elections, party leaders urged to rebuild rural infrastructure

Republican President Donald Trump may have won Wisconsin in November, but Badger State Democrats see a pathway to winning a “trifecta” in state government in 2026.

How they get there will be at the heart of the party’s state convention this upcoming weekend in the Wisconsin Dells.

Winning a trifecta means holding onto the governor’s seat, whether or not Gov. Tony Evers seeks a third term — and winning majorities in the state Assembly and Senate, both of which Republicans have controlled since 2011. Democrats flipped 14 seats in November after the Supreme Court tossed out Republican-tilted legislative maps, and 2026 is shaping up to be an even more favorable year for the party out of power in Washington.

A key step will be choosing a successor to Ben Wikler, who is stepping down after six years as the state party chair. Under Wikler, the party raised $63 million in 2024 — more than any state party, Democratic or Republican, in the country. In April, it helped Dane County Judge Susan Crawford cement a liberal majority on the state Supreme Court race until at least 2028. 

The three candidates vying for the two-year term as chair are Devin Remiker, Joe Zepecki and William Garcia.

Remiker served as the party’s executive director under Wikler and has his endorsement. Zepecki is a communications veteran with extensive election campaign experience and big-name endorsements of his own. Garcia is a dark-horse candidate — but with the party using ranked-choice voting for the first time to choose a chair, there’s a new election dynamic. In ranked-choice voting, the votes for the last place candidate are distributed to those voters’ second choice until a candidate gets a majority of the total vote.

Reaching out to Democrats around the state, not just in population centers, and shoring up the party’s reputation are common priorities of the candidates.

“I think fundraising is a really important task,” state Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, said about the next chair. “But we are a grassroots party and the reality is, money doesn’t mean much if you’re not on the ground in every community.”

The insider

Remiker, 32, now a senior adviser to the state party, lives in the Reedsburg area, about an hour northwest of Madison. He said the state party needs more focus on rural areas and voters of color, in part to repair its image.

“I think that we have fallen short, and not just the state party, but also the national Democratic Party and how people perceive us,” Remiker said. “I think we have a lot of trust building to do, and that is going to be a major focus of mine, is showing up, not to ask people to vote for us, but just to ask them to keep an open mind and rebuild those relationships of trust that have been damaged.”

At a WisPolitics event last week, Wikler said he’s been making phone calls on behalf of Remiker and described him as the architect of Crawford’s successful Supreme Court strategy of turning the race into a referendum on billionaire and Trump efficiency czar Elon Musk, who heavily backed her conservative opponent. 

Remiker described more engagement at events such as festivals and farmers markets, even away from election campaign season, as the way to maintain the momentum from the Supreme Court election.

“People take for granted that if we just show up and start talking about issues, issues that the vast majority of voters agree with us on,” that Democratic candidates will win votes, Remiker said. “But if they don’t trust the messenger, if they think that they can’t trust the Democratic Party to actually deliver or actually focus on these issues, we’re not actually able to break through.”

Remiker also has endorsements from former state Democratic Party chairs Martha Laning, Martha Love and Jeff Neubauer; U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore of Milwaukee; state Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein and state Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer.

The communicator

Zepecki, 43, lives in the Milwaukee suburb of Shorewood and runs his own communications firm. His election campaign experience includes serving as communications director for Mary Burke’s 2014 gubernatorial campaign and Barack Obama’s 2012 Wisconsin presidential campaign.

Zepecki said he wants to “fine-tune” party mobilization and get-out-the-vote efforts.

“I think over the last six years, the approach has become a little too top-down, a little too  one-size-fits-all,” he said. “We need to have a system that is flexible enough for local leaders to have a voice in the strategy because they’re the ones doing the work at the local level.”

Zepecki also said the party needs to improve communication to increase trust.

“This is not unique to Wisconsin. The Democratic Party nationally has a brand problem. Our communications and messaging are not landing,” Zepecki said.

“We have to try stuff, we have to innovate,” he added. “It might not all work, but shame on us if we don’t try and we don’t listen to the voters who are telling us they don’t believe us and they’re not hearing enough from us. That’s on us, not on the voters.”

Zepecki’s endorsements include former state party chair Linda Honold; the party chairs in Milwaukee, Racine, Waukesha, Marathon and Rock counties; and Tina Pohlman, who is co-chair along with Garcia in La Crosse County.

The dark horse

Garcia, 52, of La Crosse is a Western Technical College instructor. He is party chair for the 3rd Congressional District in western Wisconsin.

Garcia said he’s running because the county parties have been “left behind,” lacking enough resources from the state party on things such as party members, voters and communications.

“Because at the end of the day, commercials are really important, social media is really important, but it’s really the one-on-one in-person contacts that emanate from the county parties that persuade and flip voters,” he said.

Garcia, who lacks big-name endorsements, said his position as a county party leader positions him well in the election.

The state party “does so much really well, this is the blind spot right now, and that’s why I think I’m the best choice to fix it, because I’m the one that’s kind of lived in that blind spot for years,” he said.

This article first appeared on Wisconsin Watch and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.