6 days ago
Tony Evers Declines to Run for 3rd Term as Wisconsin Governor
Gov. Tony Evers of Wisconsin, who led his state through a period of Democratic resurgence, will not seek a third term next year, he announced on Thursday.
A battleground-state governor who has never displayed ambitions for higher office, Mr. Evers, 73, presided over the end of Republican dominance of his state and will leave office as his Democratic Party has a chance to win a governing trifecta for the first time in 16 years.
'I'm announcing that I will not be running for a third term,' Mr. Evers said in a video posted to social media.
Mr. Evers's political legacy in Wisconsin will be more about measures he blocked than about signature progressive accomplishments. He vetoed hundreds of bills passed by the state's Republican-controlled Legislature, including a package that would have restricted voting access after the 2020 election.
During the 2021-2022 legislative session, as he was running for re-election, Mr. Evers vetoed 32 percent of the bills Republicans had passed, a figure about 10 times above what is typical, according to the state's nonpartisan Legislative Reference Bureau.
While Mr. Evers held Republican state legislators at bay, his party won three critical State Supreme Court races that flipped the court's balance of power from the conservatives to the liberals.
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