If Joel Brennan were running for office in, say, 1998 or 2002, he’d hands down be the leading candidate, and his list of endorsements would be a list of heavy hitters and influencers within the Wisconsin Democrat Party. But it’s not; he’s not, and the list isn’t.
Joel Brennan’s campaign announced endorsements Monday from 20 former Wisconsin legislators spanning multiple regions of the state. The list, released through WisPolitics, consists entirely of individuals no longer serving in the Statehouse, with the majority having departed public office well over a decade ago.
Several endorsers last held legislative seats in the 1980s and 1990s. Others exited in the early 2010s. The roster includes former Assembly Speakers Wally Kunicki and Mike Sheridan, as well as longtime Milwaukee-area Democrats such as Tony Staskunas. Kunicki and Staskunas represented the final generation of white working-class South Milwaukee Democrats who once anchored the party’s urban base in the region. They embodied the last wave of traditional working-class Democrats from Milwaukee’s south side before broader shifts in voter coalitions took hold. And it’s well documented that those types of voters switched to Trump after years of disenfranchisement and disregard from modern liberals.
Former Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, who served in the Assembly and Senate decades earlier, also lent his name to the list. Brennan is Barrett’s godson, making the endorsement one of the more predictable entries on the roster.
Nearly every individual in the full group of endorsers concluded their time in the legislature at least 10 years ago, and several have been out of elective office for 2 decades or longer and don’t do anything to assuage the feelings of the current Democrat party base, which views Brennan as an out-of-touch white male (possibly the most discriminated-against demographic amongst far-left progressives). The inclusion of figures whose active service ended in the 1990s or early 2000s underscores the generational distance between Brennan’s backers and the voters deciding the 2026 race.
