Author: Dr. Sergio González

Last Updated: July 15, 2024

Under Andrew Jackson (1829-1837), the national Democratic Party espoused popular government against aristocratic rule, and won all but two presidential elections from 1837 to 1860. In Wisconsin, Democrats dominated territorial and early state politics. In 1846, Democratic territorial legislature under Governor Henry Dodge introduced a referendum that would set the territory on the path toward statehood. While most delegates at the 1846 constitutional convention were Democrats, attendees represented a wide spectrum of political and ideological perspectives held by residents of the state. Delegates debated variety of issues, primarily concerning state control of banks and paper currency. The progressive wing of the Democratic Party, which represented the majority of the first proposed state constitution, offered a draft markedly more liberal than those adopted by other states. It granted the franchise to immigrants who had applied for citizenship, allowed married women the right to own property, and opened the topic of Black suffrage to popular referendum. Because of the political diversity within the Democratic Party and a smaller but unified Whig Party, however, this proposed constitution failed to garner the requisite votes for passage. A more conservative version, one that failed to include any mention of women’s property rights or Black suffrage, was approved in 1848.

As the Civil War approached, the national party split apart over slavery, with Southern Democrats led by Jefferson Davis and Northern Democrats by Stephen Douglas. In Wisconsin, the Democratic Party battled the newly-formed Republican Party for control of state and local politics. Most Wisconsinites supported the Party of Lincoln, born in the state, as the country entered the war. Wisconsin had a small but vocal contingent of Democrats known as Copperheads who resisted entry into the war, opposed the military draft, and advocated for a peace settlement with the Confederates.

For almost a century, the Democratic Party was extremely weak in Wisconsin. From 1860 to 1900, Democrats controlled the governorship for only two terms. For much of the first half of the twentieth century, meanwhile, Democrats were functionally the third party in the state legislature, often trailing Republicans, ostensibly considered the state’s liberal party under the watch of Robert La Follette Sr., and Socialists in holding seats in the Senate and Assembly.

The Democrats remained out of power in Wisconsin well into the 1930s, even as the national party won large majorities amidst the Great Depression. In Wisconsin, the only Democrat to win a gubernatorial race in the first half of the twentieth century was Albert Schmedeman, who was elected governor in 1932 but only served for one term. Schmedeman’s election was largely attributed to sharing a ticket with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who surged into the White House on promises of a more active federal response to the country’s economic malaise. Once in office, Roosevelt instead lent his political support to the La Follette’s newly-formed Progressive Party, an offshoot of the Republican Party that had attracted a small contingent of liberal Democrats and which would dominate state politics during the interwar period. The Wisconsin Democratic Party’s best chance at substantive statewide power during this period, in fact, came when Daniel Hoan, the former socialist mayor of Milwaukee, switched parties and ran as a Democrat for governor in 1944 and 1946.

With the demise of the Wisconsin Progressive Party in 1946, liberals sought a new political home and found it in the Democratic Party. Former Progressives like William Proxmire, Gaylord Nelson, and James Doyle Sr. joined New Deal Democrats in revitalizing the party in the postwar era. Proxmire won a special election in 1957 to fill the senatorial seat formerly occupied by Joseph R. McCarthy, disrupting what had functionally been a one-party state for decades. The following year Nelson was elected governor before moving into the US Senate in 1962. Democrats continued to grow their political power when in 1965 they gained the majority in the state assembly for only the second time since the Great Depression. Through the end of the century, Wisconsin became a truly two-party state as Republicans and Democrats held the governorship for an equal number of years, while the state legislature regularly flipped between parties.

Learn More

• Read About Progressivism and the Wisconsin Idea

  Learn about the roots of the Progressive Party.

• See More on Gaylord Nelson

• Read 'The Rise of Wisconsin's New Democrats'

  Article by Richard Carlton Haney in the "Wisconsin Magazine of History," Volume 58, Number 2, Winter 1974-1975, pp 90-106. The article discusses the political realignment in the mid-twentieth century.

• Democratic Party in Wisconsin

  See more images, essays, newspapers and records about the Democratic Party in Wisconsin.

• Dictionary of Wisconsin History

  Explore more than 1,600 people, places and events in Wisconsin History.

[Sources: Richard C. Haney, “The Rise of Wisconsin’s New Democrats: A Political Realignment in the Mid-Twentieth Century,” The Wisconsin Magazine of History 58, no. 2 (Winter 1974-1975): 90-106; John Nichols, “Daniel Webster Hoan: The Socialist Mayor Who Jump-Started Wisconsin’s Modern Democratic Party,” The Wisconsin Magazine of History 103, no. 4 (Summer 2020): 4-17; Jeff Bloodworth, “Showdown in Chicago: Donald Peterson and New Politics Liberalism,” The Wisconsin Magazine of History 90, no. 2 (Winter 2006-2007): 2-11)