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Wisconsin State Representative Deb Andraca will be joining us to talk about the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, the special Senate election and to share her perspective on going from a volunteer to a candidate to an elected representative.
Representative Andraca started her career in environmental policy and political communications. But that’s not what led her to running for office. After settling down in the Milwaukee suburb of Whitefish Bay and raising her two daughters, she went back to school and became a substitute teacher. Seeing mass shootings across the country and experiencing lockdown drills in her own classroom and her kids’ school brought her to Moms Demand Action, where she became a volunteer leader for the Milwaukee area. It was in autumn of 2019, after pleas with lawmakers for stronger gun violence prevention fell on deaf ears, that she decided to run for office.
In 2020, she overcame Wisconsin’s notoriously extreme gerrymander to defeat a 14 year incumbent. She became one of just three Democrats to flip an Assembly seat in Wisconsin in the decade since the 2010 maps were enacted.
After getting into office, ending gerrymandering became one of her top priorities—something that may well be achieved if we succeed in electing Janet Protasiewicz. With fair maps, Democrats will finally have a fighting chance to take control of the legislature. That’s what it will take to finally pass those gun violence prevention laws that have been shut down all these years. The stakes are high, and it takes people like Rep. Andraca and you all to make change happen.
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