The Wisconsin Senate and Assembly set policy on everything from education to the environment to whether to legalize marijuana.
The Legislature has been controlled by a Republican majority for 15 years, but the balance of power could shift after the November election.
The leader of the state Senate for the last six years has been Devin LeMahieu, a Republican from Oostburg, in the Sheboygan area. He’s one of several GOP lawmakers not running again in 2026. He sat down with WUWM’s Maayan Silver for an interview to cap his tenure in office.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Maayan Silver: You’ve been in the Legislature since 2015, and you became Senate majority leader in 2020. For most of that time, the Legislature has been controlled by Republicans and the governor [has been] a Democrat. What sticks out to you as a legislative leader during this time?
Devin LeMahieu: Right, it's been three sessions now that I've been the majority leader. And the first session was right after the pandemic, and about three months in to being the new majority leader, I got a call from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau that we had a, I believe it was a $7.5 billion dollar surplus at that point. Going into a budget, that's a huge number that we had to work with.
So, the first budget that we passed, we actually didn't negotiate any of it with Gov. [Tony] Evers because we had such a huge surplus. So, it included the largest tax cut in state history — about $3.5 billion tax cut. And I believe there were three Democrats in the state Senate that voted for the budget, and the governor signed the budget. So that was great. The next two budgets with some tighter margins and maybe not as large of a surplus to work with, you know, we took time to negotiate parts of the budget with the governor.
Editor's note: According to our research, the surplus available in the 2023-2025 budget was $7.1 billion and Gov. Evers gutted GOP tax cuts that year, keeping them at $175 million instead of $3.5 billion, which Republicans had originally hailed as the largest cut in state history. Wisconsin's surplus after the 2019-2021 budget was $2.58 billion and the tax cuts were about $2 billion. We reached out to LeMahieu's office to clarify which year's surplus and tax cuts he was referring to.
What do you think have been the big goals for conservatives in the Legislature in the 2020s, under divided government?
Yeah, my goal has always been — we need to invest in things like roads … in infrastructure and healthcare and making sure there is enough resources for K-12 education. But my primary interest, and I think a lot of Republicans and conservatives, simply want to continue to reduce the tax burden on Wisconsin taxpayers.
We've done a good job, even before I was elected, starting with Gov. Scott Walker. And my focus has been sort of simplifying the tax code. We have a progressive income tax. We eliminated the personal property tax, which is harmful for small businesses, eliminated utility sales tax, just trying to simplify that tax code, but also lower it. When you have such big surpluses like we've had, that means we're taxing too much. It's a good problem to have rather than shortfalls trying to figure out how to balance the budget, but if our revenues are higher than our needed expenses, we like to try to give that back.
LISTEN: Capitol Notes: Wisconsin Senate sours on plan to spend budget surplus
We made one last-ditch effort since we got new good projections again [in 2026], and sales tax and income tax revenue to do one right at the end of the session, but, unfortunately, that passed in the Assembly but failed in the Senate.
I thought we negotiated a very good deal with the governor this time around, but every Senate Democrat voted against it, and two or three Senate Republicans voted against it.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has been governor since 2018 and is not running for reelection in 2026. What would you say is Gov. Evers' legacy?
Interestingly, I think having to work with a Republican Legislature, I think will probably help his legacy. I know he campaigned originally on tax cuts, but when you look at the three, four budgets that he's introduced, there's never really any substantive tax cuts in his budgets, more tax increases. So, he can take credit for two of the largest tax cuts in state history and cutting taxes in three of the four budgets, I believe, that he signed into law. So, I think having a Republican Legislature and knowing that he wanted to get things done caused him to come to the table for us, especially the last two sessions and going through that budget process.
READ: What's Wisconsin Democratic Governor Tony Evers' legacy?
What are you watching for from Legislative candidates in 2026? What do you think is the future of the Wisconsin Republican caucus?
You know, I think we've done a good job of running state government. Unless you live politics, it's sometimes hard for the average person who have young kids and they're going to ball games and maybe watching the news once in a while, to know that I am not in D.C., I am in Madison, and there's different levels of government and, you know, whatever’s happening in D.C., we have no control over.
But here in Wisconsin, we balance the budget. We have a $2 billion rainy day fund, we are running surpluses, we're investing in roads and education, and trying to continuously lower your tax burden. So our goal every election cycle is to, and every day as a legislator, is to go out into your community, meet people, and tell them what we're doing for you in Madison — and it's not exactly what they're doing in the mess that is Washington, D.C., where they have a hard time passing bills and are running trillion-dollar deficits. Whereas we're running surpluses and balancing budgets.
