Robin Vos’ time as Assembly Speaker must come to an end

The Gerrymander is ending and the Robin Vos era should end with it.

When a state representative who is paralyzed and uses a wheelchair asked for simple accommodations to be able to occasionally call into meetings to participate by phone, Robin Vos accused him of “political grandstanding” and denied the request. 

“It seems like Speaker Vos is going to take every opportunity to denigrate me and act as if I’m acting inappropriately when I’m simply asking for accommodations related to my disability,” said Jimmy Anderson, a Democratic state representative from Fitchburg, to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2019. 

The “political grandstanding” phrasing about someone who sits in a wheelchair was insulting enough, but Vos didn’t relent. Instead, he piled on, making another accusation on right-wing talk radio, saying Anderson was seeking these accommodations — ones to be in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, to be able to do his job as an elected official — as a way to undermine the news of Vos’ recent appointment as president of the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). Not only is this outside role largely irrelevant to the people of Wisconsin, the accusation from Vos was itself a lie. Records showed that Anderson had been making these requests for months before it became a news story.

What should have been a simple ask handled cordially by adults was instead an ugly ordeal. This incident is revelatory though as one indicative of the manner in which Vos has governed the legislature as now, the longest-serving Assembly Speaker in state history. Vos’ style of leadership is one that puts political power above all else, shoving basic respect and decency to the side, treating the opposition party as adversaries to be steamrolled or sidelined instead of fellow Wisconsinites to work alongside. He governs with a pettiness that borders on the vindictive. The cruelty being the point is not an issue isolated to the former president and current Republican presidential candidate. It has been a cornerstone of the Assembly Speaker’s leadership here in Wisconsin for as long as he’s been in that role, too. 

Of course, a year after this needlessly cruel action toward Anderson and his ability to work from home when his disability made it a challenge for him to do so, we would all learn how to call in and attend meetings remotely. But that’s when Vos instead presided over the least active full-time state legislature in the nation, at a moment of genuine crisis in 2020, going nearly 300 days without passing a single bill, suing to toss the governor’s pandemic response with no replacement. 

And that role with the National Conference of State Legislatures? In 2023, Vos would skip a special session on child care and workforce challenges to be at one of their conferences in Brazil, leaving the rest of GOP leadership to execute upon one of his hallmark maneuvers — the gavel-in, gavel-out*, where, instead of discussing a bill proposed by the Democratic governor, he and legislative Republicans refused to engage with it entirely. These have been another microcosm of the Vos brand of leadership, using a procedural loophole for his political advantage, no matter how damaging it might be to the political environment in the state.

Pull any thread, and you’ll find Robin Vos at the center of Wisconsin’s unraveling over the last 14 years. Which is why now more than ever, it’s time for the Rochester Republican to step aside as Assembly Speaker. 

With new, fairer maps, Wisconsin is finally getting out from under one of the most egregious partisan gerrymanders in the nation. The Gerrymander, as we’ve covered exhaustively here at The Recombobulation Area, has been at the core of what has warped Wisconsin’s politics for more than a decade, making leaders unaccountable to the public and pulling us further away from small-d democratic ideals of representative government. But perhaps what brought this entrenched power to new, undemocratic territory was the Assembly Speaker controlling the levers of power in the legislative branch. 

The list of ways in which Vos has acted against the interests of the state and pulled Wisconsin apart is too long for any one column, but there are a few worth mentioning here. There was the Michael Gableman saga, where Vos empowered the former state Supreme Court justice to conduct a sprawling, off-the-rails, scandal-plagued, multi-million dollar review of the 2020 election, and produced no evidence of election fraud. There was the aforementioned trip to Brazil during the special session on child care, and the myriad of gavel-in, gavel-outs on issues from abortion to gun violence prevention to criminal justice reform to education funding. There’s the constant refusal to expand Medicaid, making Wisconsin the only state in the Midwest to do so,depriving the state of billions of dollars and making health care access worse in the process. There was his action in singularly blocking a bill to expand health care coverage for new moms. There was his stubborn refusal to act on the outdated and unclear 1849 abortion ban that went into effect after Roe v. Wade was overturned. There was the lame-duck session where Vos and legislative Republicans stripped powers from the incoming Democratic governor and attorney general. There were the threats to impeach new Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz before she even heard a case. There was the tremendous failure of the Foxconn project, located right in his own Assembly district, not just a one-off failure, but the culminated goal of the entire right-wing takeover of Wisconsin’s government. There was the refusal to fund lead pipe replacement because he said too much money would go to Milwaukee. There were the many laws passed benefiting landlords and undermining renters (while he himself is a landlord). There were the years of refusal to address the state’s broken shared revenue system, coupled with the refusal to allow Milwaukee to generate new revenue, defunding local government in the city and in communities all over the state. There’s the endless refusal to legalize even medical marijuana in a reasonable way, much less decriminalize it for recreational use. There was that ridiculous pandemic election stunt, where he showed up to work the polls dressed head-to-toe in personal protective equipment. There’s been the constant, regular overnight sessions, with votes happening in the dead of night, or the countless number of times he’s kept members of the opposition party in the dark on when they’d need to show up to the Capitol next, or the endless stories of disrespectful behavior. There’s the decision to make every other year one where the legislature takes a nine-month break from legislating. The Gerrymander. Act 10. On and on and on. This is a long paragraph, and it just scratches the surface of the depths of what Vos has done in his time as Assembly Speaker. 

And while Vos has drawn the ire of Democrats and those on the left for years — justifiably, clearly — it’s now gotten to the point where Vos has spent much of the last year fending off challenges from within his own party, where the election deniers he emboldened through empowering the Gablemans of the world came home to roost after he couldn’t deliver on impossible promises to “decertify” or overturn the election, and attempted to recall him (unsuccessfully).  

The polling, too, on Vos reveals him to be a deeply unpopular figure on a statewide level. His favorability has hovered between just 12% and 17% since 2022. While that number is impacted by the more than 40% of voters who haven’t heard enough to have an opinion of him, his net-negative numbers are gargantuan for a politician at his level, regularly in the net minus-20 range. The most recent numbers show that just 14% of voters have a favorable view of him, to 35% unfavorable (50% no opinion).

The polling, too, on Vos reveals him to be a deeply unpopular figure on a statewide level. His favorability has hovered between just 12% and 17% since 2022. While that number is impacted by the more than 40% of voters who haven’t heard enough to have an opinion of him, his net-negative numbers are gargantuan for a politician at his level, regularly in the net minus-20 range. The most recent numbers show that just 14% of voters have a favorable view of him, to 35% unfavorable (50% no opinion).

Vos also seems to have one foot out the door. In the most recent year, Vos led the legislature with the most travel reports, with $35,250 paid by outside groups, according to WisPolitics. Our reporting has shown that this has included trips to Brazil, Ireland, Belgium and additional records obtained also showed a trip to South Africa. There have been rumors swirling for the last couple years that Vos is considering retiring. Ending this year would have been an even 20 years in the Assembly. But he chose instead to run for another term.

But Vos also seems to be making some calculations about his future as Assembly Speaker. In a recent story from The Daily Cardinal, he talked about needing to get to 55 Republican seats in the Assembly for him to remain as speaker, with a few GOP representatives at odds with him. 

The best way to end Vos’ time as Assembly Speaker would be to defeat him at the ballot box and flip the Assembly to Democratic control. That would be an earthquake for Wisconsin state politics, and bring a fitting end to Vos’ tenure as legislative leader, proving that it was only The Gerrymander that kept him in power for as long as he’s been. This is a potential outcome that is within reach, and parties involved should be shoveling as many resources as they can scrap together to make this a reality. It would send a powerful message. 

But this is Wisconsin, and not unlike the top of the ticket between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump or Tammy Baldwin and Eric Hovde, the race for control of the Assembly under the new, fairer maps signed into law this year is going to be remarkably close. Right now, it looks like Republicans have the advantage in retaining the majority.

But it is not going to be the type of 60-plus seat advantage that Republicans have enjoyed every year since redistricting in 2011. It is going to be much closer to reflect the reality of the 50-50 purple state that is Wisconsin. Right now, while it is possible, it doesn’t seem especially likely that Vos and Republicans will get to that 55-seat threshold. 

So, as Wisconsin enters this period of transition with new maps, it is time for new leadership in the legislature. That leadership might be a Republican, if that’s what the voters decide. 

But that leader should not be Robin Vos. He has overstayed his welcome as Assembly Speaker. If he wants to keep running for re-election in his western Racine County district, it will be up to the voters there to decide if they want him to continue to represent those communities. But his place as a statewide leader must come to an end after this election. 

Frankly, no individual should be in this role for as long as Vos has been. It’ll be twelve years at the end of this term; he was first elected in that role in 2013. Perhaps this should be a term-limited position, to protect against future leaders overstaying their welcome the way Vos has. 

It’s unclear even why Vos wants to remain in this role at this point. Perhaps it’s that Vos sees himself as the final firewall stopping some kind of liberal takeover of Wisconsin. When, in actuality, he is singularly standing in the way of this state from coming together and making true progress, and turning the page on what history will remember as a period when Wisconsin lost its way. At a certain point, it just becomes somebody else’s turn. 

It is long past time for new leadership in the Wisconsin State Legislature. The Gerrymander is ending and the Robin Vos era should end with it. It’s time for the Assembly Speaker to take a seat, stop the actual political grandstanding, and for Wisconsin to turn the page. 

This column was originally published in The Recombobulation Area. Subscribe.