JoCasta Zamarripa is asking Wisconsin for a statewide office she plans to use as a megaphone. She has already told voters what she would say into it.
“I’ll no longer be that legislator with the vote in that way, but I believe I can use the office as a platform. I’ll be able to use my soapbox,” the Democratic nominee for secretary of state told WMTV in an interview published October 14. “My number one priority is to see the governor sign driver’s licenses for undocumented Wisconsinites into law.”
The secretary of state has nothing to do with driver’s licenses. The Department of Transportation issues them. A 2006 state law requires applicants to prove they are in the country legally. Zamarripa did not pull her top priority from the job description. She pulled it from her own legislative file.
She Wrote the Bills
This is a long-running project. In September 2015, then-Rep. Zamarripa introduced Assembly Bill 343, which would have let DOT issue licenses and state ID cards to people without proof of lawful presence. The bill died in April 2016.
In December 2017, she returned with Assembly Bill 727, the same idea. Then-Rep. David Crowley, now the Democratic nominee for governor, signed on. The bill died in March 2018 without a floor vote.
In a clip WMTV posted October 15, she said she hopes the governor who signs it “will be David Crowley,” and that Crowley “was supportive” because “that was my legislation when I was in the state Assembly.”
Then the clip got around. Republican gubernatorial nominee Tom Tiffany posted about it on October 15, and suddenly Zamarripa had a problem. By October 23, Zamarripa said her top priority had changed. The new priority is a budget to add four positions to her office.
Nothing about the office changed in those nine days. The politics did. Her first answer was honest. It lines up with a decade of her bills.
Abolish ICE, Unmask the Agents
Her work on the Milwaukee Common Council points in the same direction.
On March 3, the council adopted a resolution that “calls for the abolition of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency.” Zamarripa is listed as a sponsor in the city’s legislative record. It passed 14-0.
Democratic Mayor Cavalier Johnson signed it, but wrote, “I do not join in calling for the abolition of immigration enforcement.” Johnson is on Zamarripa’s endorsement list. Her own mayor would not go as far as she did.
She also authored a resolution barring ICE from using city-owned property for civil immigration enforcement, which a council committee advanced March 9.
Then came the mask ordinance. Zamarripa co-sponsored the measure banning law enforcement officers, including federal agents, from covering their faces while dealing with the public, with forfeitures of $5,000 to $10,000. It passed April 21. At that meeting, she praised the city attorney’s office for being “committed to getting to yes.”
On July 23, the Justice Department sued Milwaukee over the ordinance. Federal officials said it is an illegal attempt to regulate the federal government and that it endangers officers who have faced “harassment, doxing, and even violence.” The Heartland Post covered the standoff and the lawsuit that followed.
That is the record she would bring to a statewide office she calls a soapbox.
Two Paychecks at Once
Zamarripa won her council seat in April 2020 and held on to her Assembly seat until January 2021. That meant two full-time taxpayer salaries: $52,999 a year from the state and $73,222 a year from the city. The total came to more than $84,000 in wages over eight months.
Her reason for staying in the Assembly was partisan. “Something important is for me to stay in my seat and finish up this term to protect the governor’s veto,” she told WUWM.
Republican Rep. Todd Novak, whom she cited as a precedent because he is also mayor of Dodgeville, told the station, “There’s no way she could balance that and being in the Assembly because I know that’s a pretty full-time job.” Dodgeville’s mayor makes roughly $7,000 a year. Zamarripa’s city job paid more than ten times that. When asked whether she would give some of the money to COVID-19 relief, she admitted she had not considered it.
A Party Job
Zamarripa has been clear about whom the office is for. “It is really critical that this office remain in Democratic hands,” she said. She said she hopes for a Democrat trifecta. She said she decided to run after Gov. Tony Evers stepped aside and she saw “there was going to be some movement” at the top of the party, and that she wanted “to galvanize and capture the Latino vote.”
The money runs both ways. The Democratic Party of Wisconsin’s pre-election finance report shows her campaign sent the party $68,000 on October 18. The same filing reported $58,817.95 in brochure printing and consulting for her campaign.
Her platform reads like a run for governor. Her campaign site calls for “bold, statewide investment in affordable child care, attainable housing, and relief at the grocery store.” In a questionnaire for Madison Teachers Inc.’s political arm, she listed “restoring collective bargaining rights stripped away under Act 10” among her top education issues. The Green Party candidate in the race, Pete Karas, said her campaign is about issues “that sound more like a campaign for governor than Secretary of State.”
The FFRF Action Fund, the political arm of the Madison-based Freedom From Religion Foundation, endorsed her and praised her for pushing back “against religious exemptions for Covid-19 mask mandates.” The group notes she worked for Planned Parenthood Advocates for Wisconsin before taking office.
On taxes, the record is short and clear. On July 11, 2023, she was one of 12 aldermen who voted for Milwaukee’s new 2% city sales tax, which took effect January 1, 2024. Given the chance to raise taxes on Milwaukee families, Zamarripa voted yes.
Schroeder Puts Voters in Charge
Republican Jay Schroeder is running on one idea, and he says so. “I’m a one-man band, and I have a one-man message,” he said.
The message: Wisconsin should end the appointed Wisconsin Elections Commission and put elections under the secretary of state, as more than 30 states do. “The Secretary of State is elected, so voters can directly hold them accountable for how our elections are run,” his campaign site says.
This year’s news tells the story. In September, the commission voted unanimously that former Green Bay clerk Celestine Jeffreys broke state law by sending duplicate absentee ballots in two 2026 elections. On primary night, Milwaukee workers loaded audit data instead of vote totals onto five of nine memory sticks, delaying results for roughly 28,000 absentee ballots.
Green Bay insists it recorded only one ballot per voter, and officials say audit logs showed no tampering in Milwaukee. That is a low bar. Wisconsin voters deserve elections run right the first time, not excuses after. Voters cannot fire an appointed commission. They can fire an elected secretary of state.
Zamarripa looks at all of that and sees nothing to fix. “Things are running smoothly, and I don’t intend to ask for that to be put under the umbrella of the secretary of state,” she told WPR.
Schroeder grew up in Clintonville, graduated from UW-Stout, and, his campaign says, was the first student elected to the Menomonie City Council. He is a real estate and stock market investor. In 2018, against Democrat Doug La Follette, who had held the office for four decades, he drew 1,235,034 votes, 47.2%. In August, he won a four-way primary with 47.3%, nearly doubling the party-endorsed candidate.
Democrats keep trying to make this race about 2020. Schroeder has answered them directly. “Generally speaking, the system works. Joe Biden [was] the president. I’m not living in the past,” he told the Wisconsin Examiner. When WMTV asked if he would have certified the 2020 results, he said, “Based on everything that was out there, yes.” He gave a straight answer and stuck with it. Zamarripa’s first answer on her top priority lasted nine days.
Schroeder wants one elected official who answers to voters for how Wisconsin runs elections. Zamarripa wants a taxpayer-funded platform for licenses for people here illegally, a bigger office, and a Democratic trifecta. On Tuesday, November 3, Wisconsin should elect Jay Schroeder.
