Jacque will run to seek Lasee’s state Senate seat
Governor will not call for 2nd special election
MADISON – One of the Legislature’s foremost abortion opponents said Tuesday he’ll run for a Senate seat opening up with the departure of Sen. Frank Lasee.
GOP state Rep. Andre Jacque of De Pere said he had a strong record as a conservative.
“I am proud to have led and gotten results on a wide array of issues of importance to my constituents in the 2nd Assembly District, from defending the right to life and human dignity to regulatory reform and eliminating barriers to economic development,” Jacque said in a statement.
Lasee, a Republican who is also from De Pere, resigned his post Friday to take a job with Gov. Scott Walker’s administration, throwing renewed attention on the 1st Senate District seat.
The other two GOP Assembly representatives in Lasee’s district, Rep. Joel Kitchens of Sturgeon Bay and Rep. Ron Tusler of Harrison, didn’t respond to requests for interviews.
The Democrats haven’t said so far who their party might field in the 1st District race.
Rep. Keith Ripp (R-Lodi) also resigned on Friday to take an administration job, creating another open race in a closely watched election year.
Walker spokesman Tom Evenson said last week that the governor will not call a special election and will leave both seats to be filled in the regular November election.
That means that the residents of the 1st Senate District and 42nd Assembly District will go just over a year with no elected representative.
Evenson defended that approach, saying that under the governor’s reading of state law no special election is required and that avoiding one will save taxpayers money. There will be relatively few session days this spring for lawmakers to vote and the office will still have staff to field concerns from constituents, he said.
Three more vacancies in the Legislature — two in the Assembly and one in the Senate — will be decided in a Jan. 16 special election. The two open Assembly seats — one previously held by a Democrat and another by a Republican — are in safe districts for each party and aren’t expected to flip from one party to another.
But in northwestern Wisconsin, the race for the state Senate seat could prove closer. In two weeks, Republican Rep. Adam Jarchow of Balsam Lake faces St. Croix County Medical Examiner Patty Schachtner, a Democrat.
If Democrats win that race, they would make it harder for the GOP to push through controversial bills this spring in the Senate, where Republicans control the body 18-13 with the vacancies.
Republicans still control the Assembly 62-34 accounting for the vacancies, so those special elections will have little effect on the remaining legislative session.