Dem leader Greta Neubauer backs redrawing Wisconsin congressional maps

MADISON – Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer, D-Racine, said she supports redrawing Wisconsin’s congressional maps, a matter currently before the state Supreme Court.

Neubauer’s comments came the day after former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, a Democratic candidate for governor, similarly signaled his support.

“I think that the current congressional maps are gerrymandered. Everyone knows that Wisconsin’s a purple state. It should be about 50-50. We’ve got six Republican congresspeople and two Democratic congresspeople,” Neubauer told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in an end-of-year interview covering a variety of topics. “So I think that these maps are not fair, and I do hope that they will consider whether new maps should be drawn.”

Last week, the state Supreme Court’s liberal majority appointed two three-judge panels to hear lawsuits from liberal groups challenging Wisconsin’s congressional lines before the 2026 elections.

President Donald Trump earlier this year pushed Republican-leaning states to redraw their congressional maps in order to add GOP-held seats in the U.S. House. The effort prompted some Democratic-leaning states to embark on their own efforts to add blue seats.

Wisconsin, where partisan control is divided between Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and a Republican-led Legislature, has not followed suit.

Evers, in a September interview with the Journal Sentinel, said it would be a mistake for Wisconsin to engage in the partisan arms race of attempting new congressional maps. Not only would it be “bad politics” for Democrats, he said at the time, he also didn’t think the party could pick up enough seats to make a difference.

The state’s current congressional lines were drawn by Evers. The state Supreme Court approved his set of maps in 2022 because it made the fewest changes compared to ones submitted by Republicans and others.

Conservative justices on the state’s high court strongly objected to the recent orders sending the lawsuits to three-judge panels, noting that the court has previously rejected challenges to Wisconsin’s congressional districts.

In its Nov. 25 orders, the liberal-led court concluded the two complaints constitute “an action to challenge the apportionment of any congressional or state legislative district” under a 2011 state law that requires such challenges to be heard by a panel appointed by the state’s high court.

Jessie Opoien can be reached at jessie.opoien@jrn.com.