MADISON, Wis.—In elections with national consequences, including future impacts on workers, pro-worker progressives won a key State Supreme Court race in Wisconsin and retained the pro-teacher State Superintendent of Public Instruction in that state.
Although they lost two open U.S. House races in deep-red Florida districts, workers and their allies in those races cut GOP margins by more than half, sending shock waves through the Republican Party which controls the House by only the barest of margins.
The blow to the GOP was felt as progressives had a big Election Day win on the House floor yesterday, when eight Republicans defected from the party’s narrow majority and joined all the Democrats to ban a bill, the so-called Save Act, crushing voting rights for millions of people, especially women, from coming to the House floor.
The day was marked not just by Democrats in Wisconsin stepping up their efforts to defeat MAGA but by a historic filibuster in the U.S. Senate.
Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., tried another way to halt the Elon Musk-Donald Trump Republican chainsaw: Talk it to death, and lay the whole story out for the entire country.
The former Newark mayor took to the Senate floor at 7 p.m. on March 31, a page took away his desk chair, and he started a filibuster. He didn’t stop until 8:05 p.m. the next day, setting an all-time filibuster record of 25 hours and five minutes.
Segregationist Strom Thurmond, then D-S.C., held the old mark, just over 24 hours straight, trying to talk the 1957 Civil Rights Act to death.
Afterwards, Booker told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow he was responding to angry constituents demanding Democrats do more to stop the GOP chainsaw massacre of programs, priorities and people.
“I do really credit constituents, who were impatient, who were demanding, who were scared, who were angry, and, very understandably, taking that anger out on Democrats, who have to take some responsibility for being where we are in American history right now,” Booker told Maddow.
“I suddenly realized that I have just got to do something myself. I have got to try to prove worthy for my constituents that I’m willing to step out and step up in some way and hopefully be able to share their stories that were so hurtful.
“They’re demanding something different. This will certainly be different.”
Keeps progressive majority
The Wisconsin win by Dane County (Madison) Circuit Court Judge Susan Crawford keeps the state’s high court at a 4-3 progressive majority, first achieved in 2023 and running through at least 2028. Crawford beat Republican Brad Schimel by a 57%-43% margin. Schimel is a former interim state Attorney General named by violently anti-union former GOP Gov. Scott Walker.
The court is poised to rule on voting rules, on yet another challenge to the rest of Walker’s infamous anti-public worker union Act 10 and on the legality of the state’s absolute abortion ban, which dates to 1848. So keeping the state High Court in progressive hands is important.
The court is also important because of next year’s regularly scheduled off-year elections in key swing state Wisconsin. The GOP is expected to scream fraud again, as it did in 2024. But pro-worker Democrats, thanks to honest redistricting—overturning a GOP gerrymander—have a good shot at retaking both houses of the legislature for the first time since 2010’s GOP sweep.
Not only did Trump lose in the Wisconsin judicial race, but so did his puppeteer, multibillionaire and labor law-breaker Elon Musk. The Tesla tycoon, who bought the White House for $290 million last year, pumped another $22 million into Schimel’s drive. Crawford took to calling Musk, not Schimel, “my opponent.”
Musk wrote million-dollar checks in Wisconsin, just as Musk distributed last year in Pennsylvania. But Musk—like Trump with his construction workers long ago in Atlantic City, N.J.—“forgot” to pay the $100 he promised his petition-carriers in Pennsylvania, an April 1 lawsuit there charges. A “John Doe,” who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, had his attorney tell The New York Times that Musk didn’t pay his staffers in Bucks County, in suburban Philadelphia.
“Working people came together and sent a clear message: Our vote can’t be bought,” said Wisconsin AFL-CIO President Stephanie Bloomingdale, an AFT member. “Wisconsinites were not swayed by Elon Musk and big-dollar buffoonery.
“In the face of nationwide attacks on our unions, our jobs, and the working class, Wisconsin workers are organizing. We are proud to stand as a united front pushing back against those who seek unprecedented and unconstitutional control of our democratic institutions.”
Union members rallied workers statewide “to say no to those seeking to purchase control of our State Supreme Court. Judge Susan Crawford’s commitment to sound judicial review and adherence to the Constitution makes her victory a win for all Wisconsinites.”
Wisconsin’s teachers unions, the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC), also strongly backed Jill Underly’s re-election as State Superintendent of Public Instruction. Wisconsin is one of the few states—deep-red Texas is another—whose superintendent has vast control over funding, curricula, test scores, standards and other aspects of public education. Wisconsin has no state board of education.
Underly succeeded current Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who beat Walker. This election, Underly defeated GOP education “consultant” Brittany Kaiser. Kaiser strongly supports giving vouchers to parents of private school students. Milwaukee, the state’s largest city, with a large community of color, became one of the first GOP test cases of vouchers and their results, which were mixed, at best.
“Dr. Underly has committed to repairing or replacing the school funding formula so it is equitable to all students regardless of their ZIP code,” said WEAC President Peggy Wirtz-Olsen when the union endorsed her on February 25. “Underly’s comprehensive plan to support public education takes into account equity, school funding and more.
The GOP salvaged one minor win in Wisconsin, writing a “voter ID” requirement—a light one—into the state constitution. Voters will now have to show some form of photo ID when they traipse to the polls, but they’ve had to do so, by state law, for almost a decade, when Walker was still governor.
News not as good
The news was not as good for progressives in Florida. Heavy involvement by Trump, and some lesser spending by Musk, produced Republican wins in the First District in Florida’s Panhandle and the Sixth District on the Atlantic Coast north of Daytona Beach.
The First District has been a longshot for progressives for years, and a progressive, pro-gun control, pro-Medicare for all Democrat, Gay Valimont, garnered 42.3% of the vote against Republican Jimmy Patronis, the state’s chief financial officer. Patronis proudly posed with Trump in the carousel photo atop the candidate’s website and proclaimed he’d go to D.C. to help Trump trash the government.
The sign of hope there is that Valimont gained almost ten percentage points over her two-to-one loss last November against scandal-scarred former Gop Rep. Matt Gaetz. She also outraised Patronis. Gaetz quit after that 2024 win when Trump nominated him to be Attorney General, but he was so toxic, even to other Republicans, that he was forced out of that job, too. He’s now pondering running for governor.
In the Sixth District, Democrat Josh Weil lost to Republican Randy Fine, who’s a rarity in the GOP and the Deep South, since he’s Jewish. Fine accused Weil, a convert to Islam, of being pro-Palestinian, in a race that featured Weil outraising Fein by a 9-1 ratio and Fine countering by bringing in Trump and other GOP bigwigs to campaign for him.
Fine won 56%-43%. Incumbent Republican Michael Waltz, who resigned after his re-election last fall to become Trump’s National Security Adviser, had won by 30 percentage points. So had Trump.
“This result is a warning sign to Donald Trump, Randy Fine, and the unelected oligarchs taking apart the government,” Weil said in a statement. “Should they continue to steal people’s hard-earned money and benefits like Social Security and Medicare, defund education and focus more on culture wars than lowering costs, the backlash is only beginning.
There was another big loser in that race: Randall Terry, the infamous founder of the radical and sometimes violent anti-abortion group Operation Rescue. When Terry endorsed the murder of a doctor in Kansas years after he founded the group, even Operation Rescue fired him. So did the voters in Florida 6: Terry finished last in the four-person race with 0.3% of the vote.
The double win by Patronis and Fine gives the GOP 220 U.S. House seats once both are sworn in, up from the 218 it now holds, compared to 213 Democrats, with special elections pending for Democratic vacancies in districts based in Tucson, Ariz., and Richmond, Va. It’s the closest edge for either party since 1917-19, when Democrats held 216 of the House’s 432 seats, Republicans held 210 and lawmakers from other parties held six.
The tenuousness of the current Republican U,S. House margin appeared on Election Day, when eight Republicans joined all the voting Democrats to defeat a “rule” setting standards for debate in the House. That’s normally a routine party-line vote. Not this time.
Progressives won when the rule lost, too. One measure that rule covered was HR22, the so-called Save Act, by ultra-right Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas. It would strip voting rights from anywhere from 21 million to 70 million people, mostly women and especially women of color (see separate story).
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., was forced to pull the rule—and HR22 with it–and adjourn the House until at least next week.
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