Sara Rodriguez has been Wisconsin’s lieutenant governor for the last four years, but now she’s hoping to move up.
With Gov. Tony Evers declining to run for a third term, a number of Democrats are facing a busy primary season to lay claim to the seat, criss-crossing the state to make it happen. Rodriguez’s journey brought her to the Town of Wescott on May 4, making her case to the Shawano-Menominee Counties Democratic Party at Docker’s.
Rodriguez said that service to the community was mandatory in her family, and that her life as a nurse was dedicated to helping others, especially during her stint in the Peace Corps. She had no aspirations for politics.
That changed in 2016 when Donald Trump made his first bid for the White House and brought up the broken immigration system and what he’d do regarding people in the U.S. illegally. Rodriguez and her husband, a U.S. citizen born in Mexico, have a son who was 8 at the time, and when her son asked if his father was going to be sent back to Mexico, she knew she needed to take action in the political arena.
“I told myself I was never going to feel that way again,” Rodriguez said. “I had not done enough to make sure that man was not elected, and I relied on other people — probably some of you in this room — to advocate for families like mine.”
She said she went to the Democratic headquarters in Waukesha County and asked to be put to work. After the 2020 pandemic and all the “misinformation” and “disinformation” that surrounded it, Rodriguez said she ran for the Assembly and flipped the red seat to blue. Then in 2022 she joined Evers on the ticket for lieutenant governor.
With Trump getting a second term as president in 2024, Rodriguez knew she needed to make sure the next Wisconsin governor was a Democrat to counter the Republican’s actions.
“If Gov. Evers was not going to run for a third term, I was going to run for governor, because we needed somebody who was going to stand strong and tall against the Trump administration, someone who was ready day one to get their agenda across the finish line and continue the good work of our (state) administration,” Rodriguez said.
On her agenda is making it easier for Wisconsin residents to afford to buy homes. Rodriguez said that the average age right now for buying a first home in the state is 40.
“They’re telling me they’re doing everything right, but they’re still feeling squeezed,” Rodriguez said.
She also plans to push for better access to child care if elected. To do that, it needs to be treated as infrastructure.
“The federal government says, for child care to be affordable, it should be no more than 7% of your income,” she said. “The average cost in Wisconsin, a family would have to be making $185,000 a year to afford one child in child care, and I had two under the age of 5.”
Rodriguez also wants to see Wisconsin catch up with neighboring states and regulate marijuana. She noted that Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker is constantly ribbing her for the Wisconsin traffic that crosses the border to purchase the drug in his state. Regulating it would help address issues with fentanyl and other dangerous drugs being mixed in and killing people, she said.
“Marijuana is not harm-free just like alcohol is not harm-free,” Rodriguez said. “I firmly believe we should regulate and legalize marijuana in this state so we can get that tax revenue.”
Rodriguez could face a challenge pushing her agenda if the Assembly, Senate or both chambers remain under control of the Republicans. However, she sees an opportunity with the newer district maps of getting the legislature back under Democrats’ control, noting liberals only need to flip two seats in the Senate and five in the Assembly.
“We have an enormous opportunity in 2026 to have a trifecta that we have not seen in almost 20 years,” Rodriguez said. “We have got to be ready. If we do not make a demonstrable difference in people’s lives, if we do not show them what it looks like when Democrats govern, they will not allow us to keep that trifecta moving forward.”
Besides concern about control in the legislature, Rodriguez said it’s also important not to let Rep. Tom Tiffany, who represents Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District and is the only Republican currently running for governor, get the seat, noting Tiffany sides with Trump on many issues.
“There is no daylight between those two men,” Rodriguez said. “He has said that tariffs are a good thing — tariffs that make our beer and cheese manufacturers raise their prices here in Wisconsin.”
Rodriguez would push to require Immigration and Custom Enforcement agents to be unmasked and wear body cameras for any action within the state, a stark contrast to Trump’s policy.
