Opposition organizers turned their campaign into a referendum on the Republican majority in the state legislature. On Tuesday, Wisconsin voters voted “no” to two ballot questions that would have stripped the governor of the authority to spend federal emergency funds on his own.
The Associated Press announced the result at 9:11 p.m., just over an hour after polls closed.
By 11:30 p.m., 94% of the votes had already been counted. The unofficial result showed that the no votes were ahead on all voting questions by a margin of almost 57% to just over 43%.
It was the first time Wisconsin voters rejected a proposed constitutional amendment since 2018. In April of that year, voters rejected an amendment that would have abolished the elected office of state treasurer – also after a vigorous opposition campaign.
Tuesday’s vote was the culmination of a more than three-year-long battle between the Republican majority in the state legislature and Democratic Governor Tony Evers, sparked by unprecedented federal aid packages that provided Wisconsin with billions of dollars during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“My administration has stabilized and rebuilt Wisconsin’s economy from the ground up during the worst economic crisis in a decade and the worst health crisis in a century,” Evers said in a statement Tuesday night. “And the proof of our hard work is clear. In recent years, Wisconsin has experienced the largest surplus in state history, historically low unemployment, a record number of Wisconsin employees, the highest levels of corporate capital investment in over a decade, and much more.”
The proposed amendment consisted of two parts. The first part stated that the Legislature could not delegate its authority to appropriate funds. The second part would require that any federal funds Wisconsin receives go through the Legislature before a governor could allocate the money.
Republican lawmakers drafted the amendment after Evers blocked several attempts on their part to control the use of Wisconsin’s share of federal pandemic relief funds.
Federal pandemic relief programs that brought an unprecedented flood of federal aid to Wisconsin included $1.9 billion from the 2020 CARES Act and $2.5 billion from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) in 2021. The money was used in a variety of ways, from funding public health measures to a public cash infusion for the struggling child care industry to a range of programs to support small businesses. Report in 2022 found that Wisconsin led the nation in using pandemic relief funds to support small businesses.
Evers rejected Republicans’ demands that he allow them to decide how his administration should allocate funds, citing a state law passed in the 1930s and later revised that gives the governor the authority to dispose of federal funds coming to the state.
“Our economic recovery is no accident – it is largely due to my administration and I making smart, strategic decisions that not only responded to immediate needs and crises, but also looked to the future to build a better, safer, and stronger economy and nation,” Evers said Tuesday evening. “We worked quickly to respond quickly, effectively, and efficiently to a global crisis, even as other branches of government consistently failed at best and actively sought to make our jobs harder at worst.”
Republicans and organizations close to them argued that the amendments would give lawmakers the necessary control over the use of pandemic relief funds.
But opponents of the measures, from Evers down, rejected that argument. A recurring argument from the opposition has been the House’s failure to even meet in 2020 – the first year of the pandemic – after passing a bill in April authorizing the state to receive the CARES funds that Congress passed earlier that year.
Opponents called the amendment a “power grab” by Republican lawmakers – a description that opponents of the amendment rejected but could not overcome. Mailers warned that the amendment would lead to a “gridlock” at the Capitol and stressed that federal resources are often needed to deal with emergencies such as natural disasters.
Evers and the opposition campaigns also pointed to actions by Republican leadership on the legislature’s Joint Finance Committee to not release funds already earmarked for certain purposes in the budget, including $125 million to clean up PFAS chemicals and $15 million to support health care providers in the Chippewa Valley following the closure of two hospitals.
The amendment’s defeat was preceded by tremendous opposition spanning numerous campaigns and news outlets, some led by nonpartisan organizations and others by groups generally aligned with the Democratic Party.
The largest campaign was a coalition, Wisconsin votes nocompiled by Wisconsin Conservation Voters. The coalition, made up of 11 different organizations, spent about $1.9 million and used direct mail, digital ads, home visits, yard signs and other forms of communication, according to Wisconsin Conservation Voters.
“As leaders of the Wisconsin Votes No coalition, Wisconsin Conservation Voters is proud to have worked hand in arm with a broad mix of organizations that shared the same concerns about the radical overreach of these changes,” the organization said in a statement Tuesday evening after AP called the contest.
The Wisconsin Democratic Party also launched an organized campaign against the change in the law, which, according to party chairman Ben Wikler, included the purchase of six-figure digital ads.
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