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Despite its long history of partisan conflict, Wisconsin is actually one of the nation’s most nonpartisan states.
Every candidate for judge, school board, municipal office, most county offices and state superintendent of public instruction runs without a party label on the ballot. The number of public officials chosen in nonpartisan elections far exceeds the ranks of federal, state and county leaders elected on a partisan basis. That places Wisconsin among the top 12 states (see sidebar below) for minimizing partisan elections, even as Democrats and Republicans wage high-profile battles for offices like governor and U.S. senator.
It’s time to pick your Milwaukee favorites for the year!
The system of nonpartisan elections has long been justified by good-government principles, embodied in former New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia’s often-quoted maxim, “There is no Democratic or Republican way of cleaning the streets.”
Yet that system is rooted at least partly in partisan maneuvering, and today it’s increasingly tested by pressure from political parties seeking to expand their field of combat.
Efforts to avoid partisanship among Wisconsin judges date to statehood in 1848, but it took another half-century or so to completely remove parties from the nominating process, according to the State Law Library. And even after elections for judicial and educational offices became fully nonpartisan in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, municipal and county elections remained partisan.
Although the Progressive movement here and nationwide pushed other government reforms to slash the power of big-city political machines – often run by Democrats – Progressive Republican leaders like Govs. Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette Sr. and Francis McGovern feared losing their advantage if their party wasn’t named on ballots, historian John Buenker wrote in a 2011-12 Wisconsin Blue Book article.
However, Democrats and Republicans saw a common foe in the Socialists who swept into power in Milwaukee’s 1910 elections. In 1912, the two major parties united on a “Fusion” ticket to oust Socialist Mayor Emil Seidel, and that victory boosted legislation requiring nonpartisan elections for most local offices, Buenker wrote.
But eliminating party labels wasn’t enough to keep the Socialists out of power. They regained the mayor’s office with Daniel Hoan’s 1916 win, and they held onto that post for 36 of the next 44 years, under Hoan and Mayor Frank Zeidler.
Progressives led efforts to establish nonpartisan elections nationwide, typically for school boards, local governments and judgeships, although Minnesota’s legislature was nonpartisan from 1913 to the mid-1970s and Nebraska’s legislature has been nonpartisan since 1937. Notably, when La Follette ran for president on a Progressive third-party ticket in 1924, much of his support came from states that lead in nonpartisan elections today: Of the top 12, he carried Wisconsin and ran second in eight others, finishing third only in Maine, while Alaska and Hawaii were not yet states.
However, as Milwaukee’s Socialist history shows, partisans can still run in and influence nonpartisan elections. In the 61 years after Zeidler left office in 1960, all three of Milwaukee’s mayors (Henry Maier, John Norquist and Tom Barrett) were former Democratic lawmakers. Most Nebraska legislators publicly identify as Republicans or Democrats. And federal courts overturned a 1986 California constitutional amendment to outlaw party endorsements in nonpartisan races.
Wisconsin’s statewide elections for education superintendent and Supreme Court justices have pitted liberals against conservatives for decades, with increasingly polarized high court races following a national trend. Still, many lower-level nonpartisan races stayed out of the ideological fray until 2020.
“Then COVID comes and every single school board in the country is faced with the same decision” of whether to shut down schools, go virtual and require masks when students returned, says Evan Crawford, assistant professor of political science at the University of San Diego. Those decisions became politicized, as racial tensions heated up with protests against the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd and Republicans’ mischaracterization of school diversity efforts as teaching “critical race theory,” Crawford says.
Until then, political parties had not been directly involved in most nonpartisan races in Wisconsin. But in 2021, Milwaukee Magazine found both Republican and Democratic money flowed into contests for school boards and other local offices.
That trend has accelerated. Democrats contributed $100,000 to help Cavalier Johnson win a 2022 Milwaukee mayoral race that he was in no danger of losing. Republicans started bragging about “flipping” school boards, particularly in Waukesha County, where the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel found candidates backed by the county GOP’s WisRed operation now hold 80% of school board seats and command majorities in every district except Elmbrook.
All that leads some politicians and scholars to question whether nonpartisan elections still serve a purpose or just obscure candidates’ beliefs. Among them is Benny Witkovsky, who researched political polarization in medium-sized Wisconsin cities as a sociology graduate student at UW-Madison. He argues nonpartisan elections increase voter frustration, because “there’s a lot of anger when (politicians) are seen as violating their commitment to nonpartisanship.”
Nationwide, bills introduced to convert nonpartisan school board elections to partisan contests have increased sharply since 2010, primarily in Republican-led state legislatures, says Crawford, who also started studying nonpartisan elections as a UW-Madison graduate student.
However, Crawford’s research shows most voters prefer nonpartisan school board elections, with support strongest among Democrats in red counties. Conversely, support for partisan elections is strongest among Republicans in the same counties, suggesting that they believe party identification gives them an edge where they’re in the majority, Crawford says.
Witkovsky isn’t arguing for fully partisan local elections, but he says it would be more transparent if candidates could publicly declare their party affiliations while still running in a primary where the top two vote-getters advance to the general election, similar to California’s congressional and state elections.
“I’m hopeful for partisan politics at the local level that would not be as dysfunctional as at the state and federal level,” Witkovsky says.
Who’s Least Partisan of All?
Many states hold nonpartisan elections for some offices, particularly local school boards, but the practice is most widespread in the Upper Midwest and on the West Coast. Twelve states choose all of their judges and educational and municipal officials through a combination of nonpartisan elections and appointments, with variations at the county level.
Minnesota, North Dakota, California, Alaska and Hawaii
No partisan elections for any county office.
Wisconsin and Oregon
Some partisan elections for county offices. Oregon is the only state with nonpartisan elections for a statewide administrator (labor commissioner) other than education superintendent.
South Dakota, Nevada and Washington
Mostly partisan elections for county offices.
Iowa and Maine
Partisan elections for all county offices.
Nebraska
Only state with nonpartisan legislative elections. No partisan elections for any judge or educational office; partisan elections for all county offices and some municipal offices.
