Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers gives the annual State of the State address Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025, at the state Capitol in Madison, Wis. (AP Photo/Morry Gash, File)

On Thursday, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers (D) announced that he will not seek a third term in office in 2026, giving the state its first open gubernatorial race in 16 years.

Evers, who will be 75 years old before November 2026’s gubernatorial election, said he was proud of his 50 years of public service, but that the only thing he enjoys doing more is being a husband, father and grandfather.

Evers’ announcement creates a potentially competitive open race in a consequential election. Since the GOP has held both chambers of the state legislature since the early 2010s, Evers’ two terms have effectively foiled a lot of the Republicans’ attempts to cling to absolute power. Evers has worked to preserve reproductive rights in the state, implement gun control and overturn gerrymandered maps.

The maps, which preserved Republican majorities for a decade and a half, were finally redrawn before the 2024 elections last year. This resulted in Democrats breaking a Republican supermajority in the state Senate and picking up nine seats in the state Assembly. This put Democrats in a position to potentially regain a majority in the Senate for the first time since 2010.

With Evers retiring at the end of his term, 2026 will be the first time Wisconsin will vote in an open gubernatorial election since 2010, when Republican Scott Walker defeated Democrat Tom Barrett.

The road ahead for Democrats becomes a bit more complicated without an incumbent governor in position; Sabato’s Crystal Ball changed the race’s status from “Lean Dem” to “Tossup” because there will be no incumbent. But there are a slew of potential candidates who could throw their name into the race. These names include former state party Chair Ben Wikler, state Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee), state Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) and Attorney General Josh Kaul (D).

On the Republican side, 2024 Senate candidate Eric Hovde and 2022 gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels have been rumored to be thinking about 2026 candidacies. The two declared candidates are Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann and manufacturing CEO Bill Berrien. The latter has already spent $400,000 in ads despite the primary election being over a year away.

Berrien is on record saying he likes U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden’s (R-WI) style of honesty during a recent interview on WIZM. A retired Navy SEAL like Van Orden, he said the two of them lived “down the hall from each other” in platoons in the early 1990s.

“And, you know, the Congress hasn’t changed Derrick,” Berrien said on the “La Crosse Talk” radio show. “It’s the  best parts of the SEAL world. You know, in that community, you want honesty. You want the truth and not sort of sugarcoating things, because that’s how better decisions get made. And I like Derrick’s style. Just being, you know, blunt about the truth. And that’s helpful, I find.”

Van Orden, a staunch ally of President Donald Trump, is on record flip-flopping about numerous policies and ideas. He downplayed his participation in the Trump’s Stop the Steal on Jan. 6, 2021, despite touting his visit as a way to “stand up for the integrity of our electoral system” in a tweet days before.

Van Orden has also lied about the One Big Beautiful Bill, claiming that it does not cut Medicaid even though it represents a projected $1 trillion cut for the program over the next decade. Despite pledging to never vote for Medicaid cuts or cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Van Orden rubber stamped the Big Beautiful Bill along with 214 other Republican representatives.

Berrien told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel earlier this month that he wished replicate Trump’s aggressive tariffs at the state level. Tariffs are set at the federal and international level, not the state level.