When Sen. Rob Hutton, the Brookfield Republican, announced he wasn’t running for re-election in District 5, he left open a Senate seat in a district that stretches from Wauwatosa to Pewaukee and is, by some accounts, one of the most competitive in the state.
On Election Day, Nov. 3, District 5 voters will choose between state Rep. Robyn Vining, a Wauwatosa Democrat, and Mike Roberts, a Pewaukee Republican. It is a race that could help decide control of the Senate, which currently has an 18-15 Republican majority.
Tosa Forward News Staff
Vining, a professional photographer and four-term state representative, says newly drawn legislative maps finally give Democrats a shot at control of the Senate. "We've been fighting up against a gerrymandered wall for the last 16 years," she said, "and now we could actually win the majority."
Roberts, a physical therapist who has run a practice in Wauwatosa for 15 years, has never held elective office but says he is running to address the needs of residents like his neighbors and patients. He pitches himself as a problem solver who will work across the aisle.
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In separate interviews with Tosa Forward News, both candidates said property taxes are squeezing residents and that school referendums have become too routine. Their solutions diverge sharply. Here is where each stands on the issues they raised.
The District 5 candidates at a glance
Mike Roberts
Age: 39
Residence: Pewaukee
Family: Wife, three kids and two guinea pigs (Rocky and S’mores)
Education/professional experience: Physical therapist, with a bachelor degree in exercise science and doctorate in physical therapy from Carroll University.
Political experience: Has not held elected office before.
Lived in the district: 39 years
Why you are running: “There’s a number of reasons why I’m running, especially with this new District 5 map that changed a couple years ago. It’s a perfect representation of my life growing up in Pewaukee and owning my practice in Wauwatosa and where I went to college in Waukesha. For my lifelong friends, my family, my patients, the same issues come up again and again, whether it’s cost of living or their kids’ education or crime. When Sen. Hutton announced he was going to retire, I wanted to run to be a problem solver for my community at the state level and be willing to work with both sides of the aisle to get that done.”
Top priority issues: Cost of living, education, healthcare and crime.
Campaign website: mikerobertswi.com
Robyn Vining
Age: 49
Residence: Wauwatosa
Family: Husband, two children and a dog (Coco)
Education/professional experience: Photographer, with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and studio art from James Madison University and a master’s degree in theology and culture from Trinity International University.
Political experience: State representative since 2018.
Lived in the district: 19 years.
Why you are running: “I’m running to make life better for Wisconsinites. I ran for office for the first time in 2018 because I was a mom concerned about sending her kids to school in a world where children have to do gun violence drills. I ran because I lost my health insurance when I was pregnant with my son, and I believe everyone deserves access to quality affordable healthcare. When the state passed maps that were competitive for the first time in 16 years, this became a chance to enact policies around affordable healthcare, protecting our communities from gun violence, affordable housing, funding our public schools, supporting teachers and much more.”
Top priority issues: Healthcare, education, gun violence, childcare.
Campaign website: robynforwi.com
The District 5 candidates on the issues
Cost of living
Both candidates noted cost of living as a top issue for their campaigns, and they agreed that the government’s shared revenue and public funding formula was broken at the state and local levels. However, both took different approaches to how to bring costs down for constituents.
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Vining emphasized funding of critical needs, like education, healthcare and childcare, and she especially highlighted diminished state funding for schools, noting its impact on property taxes at the district level by fueling the “constant cycle of school referendums” for major projects and operations.
“These school referendums are such a huge chunk of property taxes,” Vining said. “The [state’s] shared revenue formula is broken, and if we fix it, municipalities won’t be strangled and starving and property taxes won’t go up more than they need to. If we can address these two things, those are two big chunks of that issue, and then we need to do more beyond that.”
Roberts said he aims to put more money in the pockets of Wisconsinites through cutting spending at the state level. “We need to look at the waste, fraud and abuse that may be going on and use that money to get it back into our constituents’ pockets and be able to fund other areas of need like roadways, education, law enforcement,” Roberts said. “We can’t be continuously relying on property taxes and the taxpayers to be funding those.”
Roberts added that he wants Wisconsin to cut regulations and lower the overall tax burden, arguing both would make the state more competitive for businesses and workers. He cites a count of “more than 155,000 state regulations,” an apparent reference to a study by the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, or WILL. (The national average in the study was 134,000 regulations per state.)
He backs the “red tape reset” bills that were introduced by state Republican legislators and said he would like to see the package reintroduced and adopted. He said doing so would add $6.6 billion to the state’s economy in the coming years, according to WILL’s estimates.