Voters rejected two ballot questions Tuesday amending the Wisconsin Constitution to restrict the governor's ability to spend federal funds. Gov. Tony Evers urged a "No" vote on the ballot questions two weeks ago at a news conference with Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)
In a campaign that opposition organizers turned into a referendum on the state Legislature’s Republican majority, Wisconsin voters answered “No” Tuesday to two ballot questions that would have stripped the governor’s power to independently spend federal emergency funds.
The Associated Press called the outcome at 9:11 p.m., a little more than an hour after the polls closed.
With 99% of the votes counted, the unofficial results showed “No” winning by a margin of more than 57% to nearly 43% for “Yes” on each of the ballot questions.
It marked the first time since 2018 that Wisconsin voters have rejected a proposed constitutional amendment. In April of that year, voters turned back an amendment that would have eliminated the elected state treasurer’s office — also after a spirited opposition campaign.
Tuesday’s vote was the culmination of a battle that has been underway for more than three years between the Republican majority of the state Legislature and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, growing out of the unprecedentedly large federal relief bills that sent billions of dollars to Wisconsin during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“My administration stabilized and rebuilt Wisconsin’s economy from the ground up during the worst economic crisis in a decade and the worst public health emergency in a century,” Evers said in a statement Tuesday evening. “And the proof of our hard work is in the pudding. In recent years, Wisconsin’s seen the largest surplus in state history, historically low unemployment, a record-high number of Wisconsinites employed, the most capital investments from businesses in over a decade, and so much more.”
The proposed amendment had two parts. The first stated that the Legislature could not delegate its power to appropriate money. The second would require all federal funds Wisconsin receives to go through the Legislature before a governor could allocate the money.
Republican lawmakers authored the amendment after Evers vetoed several attempts on their part to call the shots on how Wisconsin’s share of federal pandemic relief funds were spent.
The federal pandemic relief programs that brought an unprecedented flood of federal aid to Wisconsin included $1.9 billion from the 2020 CARES Act and $2.5 billion from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) in 2021. The money was put to use in a wide-ranging assortment of ways, from funding for public health measures to a public infusion of cash for the struggling child care industry to a series of programs aimed at helping small businesses. A report in 2022 found that Wisconsin led the nation in its use of pandemic relief money to help small business.
In rejecting Republican demands to let them pass judgment on his administration’s allocation of the funds, Evers cited a state law originally passed in the 1930s and subsequently revised that gives the governor the power to direct federal dollars that come to the state.
“Our economic recovery didn’t happen by accident—it happened in large part because my administration and I made smart, strategic decisions that not only responded to immediate needs and crises but looked toward the future to build a better, safer, and stronger economy and state,” Evers declared Tuesday night. “We worked quickly to respond to a global crisis expeditiously, effectively, and efficiently even as other branches of government, at best, consistently failed to meet that moment and, at worst, actively sought to make our work more difficult.”
The Republicans and organizations aligned with them argued that the amendments would give the Legislature necessary oversight on how the pandemic relief money was spent.
Opponents of the measures, from Evers on down, turned that argument back, however. A recurring opposition argument cited the Legislature’s failure to meet at all in 2020 — the first year of the pandemic — after passing legislation in April that authorized the state to receive the CARES funding that Congress enacted earlier that year.
Opponents labeled the amendment a “power grab” by Republican lawmakers — a description that the amendment’s opponents pushed back on but were unable to overcome. Mailers warned that the amendment would result in “gridlock” in the Capitol and emphasized that federal funds were often needed to address emergencies such as natural disasters.
Evers as well as the opposition campaigns also pointed to actions by the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee’s Republican leaders not to release funds that had already been budgeted for designated purposes, including $125 million for cleaning up PFAS chemicals and $15 million to assist health care providers in the Chippewa Valley after the closure of two hospitals there.
The amendment’s defeat followed a juggernaut of opposition, with multiple campaigns and messaging channels, some by nonpartisan organizations and others by groups generally aligned with the Democratic party.
The single largest campaign was a coalition, Wisconsin Votes No , assembled by Wisconsin Conservation Voters. Consisting of 11 separate organizations, the coalition spent about $1.9 million, using direct mail, digital ads, door-to-door visits, yard signs and other forms of communication, according to Wisconsin Conservation Voters.
“As leader of the Wisconsin Votes No coalition, Wisconsin Conservation Voters is proud to have worked arm-in-arm with a broad mix of organizations that shared the same concerns over the radical overreach these amendments represented,” the organization said in a statement Tuesday night after AP called the contest.
The Wisconsin Democratic Party also mounted an organized campaign against the amendment that included a digital ad buy in six figures, according to Ben Wikler, the party chair.
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