Democratic candidate elected secretary of state in 3-way contest

A former state Assembly member and current Milwaukee alder won the race for Wisconsin secretary of state Tuesday, becoming the first Latina elected to statewide office.

The AP called the race for JoCasta Zamarripa at 11:38 p.m. Tuesday. With 91% of the ballots counted, Zamarripa led with just over 50% of the vote. 

Republican candidate Jay Schroeder had just over 46%, and Pete Karas of the Green Party had just under 4%.

Zamarripa released a statement Tuesday thanking her supporters and vowing to “uphold our democracy, protect the right to vote, and keep partisan politics out of our everyday governing.”

The Wisconsin Secretary of State’s current duties include maintaining a variety of state records, affixing the state seal to acts of the governor, certifying certain documents for people going overseas, certifying the state’s votes for U.S. President and U.S. Senate, and sitting on the Board of Commissioners of Public Lands.

The public lands board, which also includes the state treasurer and the state attorney general, makes loans for public projects to local governments and distributes the revenues from the public lands timber sales to public schools through the state’s common schools fund.

“I will do the real work this office demands for Wisconsin families, and I will be a voice for every community that has too often felt unseen,” Zamarripa said.

Schroeder, the Republican candidate, made his central campaign issue a call to return election administration to the secretary of state’s office more than 50 years after it had been transferred to an independent agency. He won the Republican primary in August with a platform that focused almost entirely on taking over the election process, which would require a change in state law.

On the weekend before Election Day, the race was roiled by an allegation that Schroeder had impersonated Karas’ campaign with text messages in support of the Green Party candidate. Karas filed a complaint with the Wisconsin Elections Board Monday charging Schroeder with violating a state law against election misrepresentation.

Karas and Zamarripa both said the messages appeared to be aimed at pulling support from the Democratic candidate’s campaign — dividing voters who opposed Schroeder and in the process enabling the Republican to prevail.

Schroeder’s argument for bringing election administration back to the secretary of state’s office rests on claims about the elections commission’s operation and practices that current and former state elections officials and the other candidates have all rejected.

Schroeder was the Republican candidate for secretary of state in 2018 and also ran unsuccessfully in the Republican primary for the office in 2022. During that race, he indicated he would not have certified Wisconsin’s electoral votes for Joe Biden in 2020.

In an interview earlier this year he did not deny the earlier remark but distanced himself from it and said that he accepted Biden’s election as president that year.

Schroeder has campaigned as an “authentic MAGA activist” and a “MAGA aligned candidate on election integrity,” but in an interview also sought to downplay those characterizations.