Few elections in recent US history have arguably been as consequential as the Wisconsin gubernatorial contest of 2010. Following Scott Walker’s election, the state — once a laboratory of social democracy and progressive reform — was quickly transformed into an oligarch-funded experiment in reaction and anti-majoritarian rule.

Despite the resistance of many Wisconsinites, Walker spent the next eight years running roughshod over the state’s storied progressive heritage: surviving a recall and passing a suite of right-wing initiatives that included tax cuts, a right-to-work law, newly draconian welfare rules, the expansion of school vouchers, relaxed gun laws, and restrictive voter ID rules making it harder to vote. To consolidate their hold on power, Republicans also redrew the state’s electoral maps to create what the Princeton Gerrymandering Project has deemed among the “most extreme partisan gerrymanders” anywhere in the United States.

“No matter how much Wisconsin voters might want to elect a Democratic Legislature,” as the New York Times’ Jamelle Bouie recently put it, “the Republican gerrymander won’t allow them to.” The state’s 2012 legislative elections, for example, saw Republicans secure 46 percent of the vote but win 60 percent of the seats. In 2018, when Walker was finally ousted by Democrat Tony Evers, Republicans again won an Assembly supermajority despite losing the popular vote by a full eight percentage points and losing elections for every single statewide office.