Wisconsin Democrats on Tuesday elected Sen. Dianne Hesselbein to serve as Senate Majority Leader for the new legislative session in January.
Hesselbein, who ran unopposed, had served as Senate Minority Leader. She will take the gavel for the first Democratic Senate majority in 16 years after Democrats won back control of the chamber with an 18-15 majority last week.
“What a day, what a day,” Hesselbein said in her opening address to the Senate Democratic Caucus. “We are in a new room thanks to all the hard work that everyone has done. It’s not lost on me that just a little over two years ago we only had eleven Senate Democrats in this caucus. Eleven.”
The Democratic caucus on Tuesday also elected Sen. Mark Spreitzer as Senate President, Sen. Kristin Dassler-Atlheim as Assistant Majority Leader, and Sen. Dora Drake as Senate President Pro Tempore. Sen. Melissa Ratcliff will serve as Caucus Chair while Sen. Jeff Smith will be Vice Caucus Chair.
“We know that this is a monumentous [sic] day,” Hesselbein told members. “It’s the beginning of unfinished work that we know we have to do. And with this comes a great responsibility to bring in and renew the government’s commitment to being a democracy of the people, for the people, not of the government of the bullies and the billionaires.”
