Now that Democrat Mitchell Berman, a political outsider, beat U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil for control of Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District, a Republican stronghold, Democrats will need to fight to keep it.
Before Berman’s four-point win, Steil had comfortably won his reelection bids by an average of about 12 points, and prior to the rookie Democrat’s surprise win, Republicans had controlled the seat for 30 years.
Berman, the emergency room nurse turned congressman-elect, joins Democrats in wins up and down the ballot across the country.
Voters in the southeastern Wisconsin district have shown they’re comfortable voting for Democrats and Republicans, said Mordecai Lee, a UW-Milwaukee political science professor emeritus. The battle to defend or revert the district hinges on who can best communicate with the voters there, Lee said.
Steil will “probably do what every self-respecting politician would do: regain his honor by running again and recapturing his seat,” Lee wrote in an email to The Badger Project.
Will Steil join the Trump administration?
It wouldn’t be surprising to see Steil get an appointment in President Donald Trump’s administration that keeps him coming back to Wisconsin, Lee said. He needs to keep making news in the state, including by critiquing Berman.
“Another alternative is a job with the AI and cyber sectors,” Lee wrote. “They supported him and would likely want to give him a job in appreciation. Doing that would also be a signal to other like-minded, current politicians that this industry takes care of its own.”
If Steil stays in politics, there are other offices he could focus on as well, including a U.S. Senate seat if Ron Johnson opts to retire when his term ends in 2028, said UW-Green Bay political science professor Aaron Weinschenk.
“Obviously we don’t know if Ron Johnson will run for another term (although I think he’s considering retirement), but someone like Steil who previously served in the House could be a possible candidate,” Weinschenk wrote in an email.
Steil’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
Berman’s reelection campaign
If Berman wants to hold the seat, Lee said, he should have already started his reelection campaign. Berman’s messaging shouldn’t emphasize that he’s a Democrat, but instead that he will represent the entire district in Congress.
Whether it stays blue is hard to say and depends on how Democrats respond to the issues important to voters, Weinschenk said.
“A lot can change in two years,” Weinschenk wrote. “If Democrats are responsive to the issues that Americans are concerned with, the political environment could be favorable for Democrats in 2028. If they have a harder time addressing the issues on people’s minds, then the environment might be more difficult.”
It’s possible that the congressional maps could change by then as well, as at least one lawsuit is still alive trying to force another redistricting.
The 1st Congressional District became friendlier to Democrats in the 2021 round of redistricting, though Steil won twice under those maps before losing this year.
Gov. Tony Evers submitted maps to the Wisconsin Supreme Court that made the district slightly more favorable to his party. He moved Beloit and parts of Whitewater and the Milwaukee suburbs into the 1st, while removing some right-leaning rural areas. That swung the district from one that favored Republicans by 14 percentage points to just six, according to the political website FiveThirtyEight.
Another bit of history that might be informative on Berman’s situation is the story of Father Robert Cornell. After running unsuccessfully in 1970 and 1972, the Catholic priest and political science professor at St. Norbert’s College rode the anti-Republican, post-Watergate wave in 1974 to win in the 8th Congressional District, which includes Green Bay and much of northeastern Wisconsin and was and still is fairly right-leaning. The Democrat Cornell won again in 1976 before losing his second reelection bid in 1978.
This story was funded by a grant from Press Forward’s Election Integrity Fund.
The Badger Project is an independent news nonprofit in Wisconsin.
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