State Sen. Kelda Roys makes a move to break through crowded Democratic primary

State Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) wants voters to know that she has plans and bills.

In Wisconsin’s six-way Democratic contest for the gubernatorial nomination on August 11, Roys says, “It’s a big differentiator in this primary that I have by far the most experience in and around state government.”

“And I don’t just have bullet points that some consultant generated for me,” she adds.

Roys is taking her second shot at running for governor. She came third in the 2018 Democratic primary behind Gov. Tony Evers and Mahlon Mitchell, president of the Professional Fire Fighters of Wisconsin, with a campaign centered on abortion rights and an online ad that went viral in which she breastfed one of her children. This year she again faces a crowded primary field.

The five other candidates who will be on voters’ ballots are Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, state Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison), Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, and former head of Gov. Tony Evers’ Department of Administration Joel Brennan. Missy Huges, former head of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., dropped out Monday.

Roys is betting that the political experience she has gained since her last run can help her break through with primary voters.

In a March Marquette Law School poll, 18% of Wisconsin voters said they recognized her name and 1% of Wisconsin Democratic primary voters said they would vote for her, putting her behind five other candidates and tied with Hughes.

Roys doesn’t put much stock into those results.

“Polls are a reflection of who has spent money and the vast majority of people are not paying attention and will not start paying attention, much to my chagrin…until much later in the summer,” Roys said. In her December campaign finance report, Roys reported raising more than $355,000. The next reports aren’t due until July. “It’s important to be able to have the resources to reach voters and communicate with them when and where they pay attention,” she said.

Roys thinks Democratic voters will ultimately prioritize governing experience and detailed policy proposals in a crowded field and will go her way when they learn about her.

Roys came in third in a straw poll conducted by WisPolitics at the Democratic Party of Wisconsin convention — behind Rodriguez and Hong. Breaking into the top three was a marked improvement compared to her standing in previous polls.

Last week, Roys sought to build on the momentum, investing $500,000 in a statewide ad buy to try to swing voters her way.

In the ad, Roys pulls two of her children along with her on a bike ride through Madison, laying out her experience and talking about her plans for the state.

“For 25 years, I’ve worked to make Wisconsin better for my kids and yours. As a state senator, attorney and small business owner, I’ve delivered for Wisconsin,” Roys says in the ad. “As governor, I’ll protect our democracy from Donald Trump’s regime, lower costs and open the state healthcare plan so anyone can buyin and fully fund our schools. Let’s ride.”

Roys, an attorney who also runs an online real-estate brokerage platform and who previously served as the executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Wisconsin, often highlights her experience outside government as part of her pitch to voters.

According to a press release, her ad will target Democratic primary voters across the state “based on robust polling and research identifying Roys’ target voters.” She is the second candidate to make a statewide ad buy after Brennan.

Roys, who first was elected to the Senate in 2020 and serves on the Joint Finance Committee, currently represents one of the bluest districts in the state. It includes downtown Madison, the UW–Madison campus and the near-west and east sides of the city.

During the 2025–26 legislative session, Roys authored 177 proposals. Those policy ideas have become the platform of her campaign.

Since joining the budget-writing Joint Finance Committee in 2023, Roys has been deeply involved in state budget debates, though her ability to advance legislation was limited in the Republican-controlled Legislature.

Schools are the “defining fight”

Roys told the Examiner in an interview in April that school funding would be the “defining fight of the next budget.”

She highlighted the legislative record of U.S. Rep Tom Tiffany, the Republican candidate who is running for governor with President Donald Trump’s endorsement. When he was first elected to the Wisconsin Legislature, she said, “He attacked public education and put in the most devastating cuts in the history of the state to public schools. Our kids have never recovered from that.”

Roys says that the state’s projected $2.5 billion budget surplus is money that has been “stolen” from public schools and their students. She, along with other Senate Democrats, voted against a $1.8 billion tax-cut and school-funding deal negotiated by Evers and Republican leaders that would have provided $300 million for special education, $300 rebate checks to taxpayers and property tax relief. She said sending out checks to people would be like setting the surplus on fire.

“This is a last-ditch, desperate attempt by Republicans to try to hold on to their dying power,” Roys said. “I can’t imagine why a Democratic governor would want to go along with that.”

Roys told the Examiner that “our kids getting shortchanged again” is the thing that would make her veto a state budget and that she wants the entire surplus put back into the public school system. She often ties her focus on education to her upbringing in rural Taylor County, where she grew up in a remodeled one-room schoolhouse and attended the local public school.

“It was never contemplated that we wouldn’t be going to public school. We got a great education,” Roys said.  Attending one of her child’s parent-teacher conferences recently she said she was struck that “what my kids are getting is just not close to what I had: the class sizes, the learning opportunities. They’ve got one-to-one Chromebooks, but they have art once a week for a third of the year, music is once a week, gym is once a week. It’s not good.”

Her positions on education won her the endorsement of the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC) in April. She called it the “most important endorsement that’s going to happen in this Democratic primary.”

“They have the most reach. They have the most resources. They have the moral authority, representing 70,000 educators and public school support professionals across the state of Wisconsin. And people in this state love their public schools,” Roys said, adding that she “earned it because of my policy positions, because of my plans for public education, and because I think they recognized that this election is in some ways existential for our public schools.”

Roys, with one of her five children sitting on her lap, answered questions and discussed prominent issues with a group of teachers at a bar in Muskellounge and Sporting Club in Madison on April 24.

Molly Grupe, a member of WEAC, said she was thrilled the WEAC board took action on the endorsement, saying that waiting too long can blunt the impact and now they can start organizing educators to get out the vote.

“So smart. So quick. So prepared. I mean, she just knows what she’s talking about,” Grupe said. “I just think Kelda is really poised to exercise power as a strong woman and a Democrat. We’ve never had a woman governor in the state, which is crazy.”

Kelly Peggy Sullivan, the vice president of the Monona Grove Education Association who helped organize educators for the Friday event, said she was happy to bring people out to learn more about Roys’ campaign.

Sullivan said “funding cuts and voucher schools and de-professionalizing parts of our profession” has had an impact on schools, and that there needs to be a candidate who’s going to prioritize public education and make schools stronger for children.

“It’s very clear that she has some of the best understanding of what we’re dealing with on a day to day basis, and what we’ve kind of struggled with over the last 15 years with the Republicans in control,” Sullivan said.

Roys has said she wants to bring the state’s voucher program to a “responsible” end. She has said she has a three-step plan.

“I’m not calling for immediate elimination but we are spending nearly $700 million each year on unaccountable, discriminatory, non-transparent voucher programs that the evidence shows on balance perform no better than public schools.” Roys said.

The plan includes implementing additional accountability, transparency and nondiscrimination requirements for any private or charter school that receives public funds; no longer covering the costs for students enrolled in the Wisconsin Parental Choice Program; and then slowly ending the Milwaukee and Racine Parental Choice Programs over the span of about 20 years.

Roys said that under her plan students currently participating in the Milwaukee and Racine Parental Choice Programs and their siblings would be able to complete their education in the program, but additional students would not be able to enroll.

“These are kids who have already faced some significant challenges and it would be highly disruptive to just make them change schools…We know that having a stable school environment is important for them,” Roys said. “Over time, as these kids… graduate, you are gradually reducing the number of kids who are enrolling in voucher programs. At the same time, you’re increasing the capacity and the quality of the public schools, so that more and more Milwaukee parents will feel excited about their kids attending the public schools in their district.”

Roys added that any voucher school would have the option to convert to a public instrumentality charter school if they wanted to continue to receive public funds even as the voucher program ended.

Childcare, healthcare and taxation

Roys said understanding how state government is structured and funded is essential to advancing priorities including expanding healthcare and childcare access and reducing costs for families.

“We live in kind of a garbage political culture that values reality TV, aesthetics over competence and substantive knowledge, but I actually think that’s pretty bad for a governor,” Roys said.

Roys also served in the state Assembly, the last time Democrats held a trifecta in Wisconsin. Her legislative experience is shaping her plans for how she would approach the job as Wisconsin’s top executive, especially as Democrats are seeking to flip the Assembly and Senate this year.

Roys supports providing universal access to early childhood education by ensuring that no family pays more than 7% of their income for childcare. She says that can be done by expanding the Wisconsin Shares program to bring in more federal money and legalizing and taxing cannabis. She said the working title for her program is “get baked for babies.”

To help Wisconsinites struggling with high costs, Roys has said she wants to increase the minimum wage. She has co-authored legislation that would place the minimum wage, currently $7.25 an hour, at $15 an hour with a path to make it $20 by 2030. Another of Roys’ proposals, which she is hoping differentiates her from other candidates focused on expanding Medicaid and a public option, is opening up the state employee health insurance plan to allow private citizens and businesses to buy into coverage. She’s calling it “KeldaCare.”

Roys began circulating a cosponsorship memo for the idea in bill form as SB 1096 on Feb. 12. She announced the campaign platform the same day.  A Legislative Fiscal Bureau memo on the bill warns that the plan could reduce the state’s “bargaining leverage” with health insurance companies and could “increase administrative complexity and increase premium volatility.”

Roys has said she would “restore” the top tax rate as governor so the state’s wealthiest pay more. In 2013, Wisconsin’s highest individual income tax rate was 7.75% before being reduced to 7.65% under Republican lawmakers.

“It’s not fair for working people and retirees and the middle class and young people just starting out to have to pay our fair share of taxes and the wealthiest among us don’t. It’s not fair for small businesses to bear the brunt of providing public services,” Roys said. “Meanwhile big multinational corporations, not only do they not pay their fair share… oftentimes, we’re shoveling money at them. We’re giving them huge tax credits.”

Roys says she is the “proven fighter” people want

While Roys has positioned herself as a sharp critic of Republicans and the Trump administration, she said she would still work with lawmakers across the aisle as governor.

“I understand that as governor — this is no kings. So this is going to be an open discussion that I am going to have as we craft the budget together with public input and public oversight, and in conjunction with the Legislature who are governing partners,” Roys said.

Roys noted in an interview that she hasn’t always agreed with people in her own party. “I believe that my job is to do what I think is right to the best of my ability after listening to the people whom I represent, which I always consider to be the entire state of Wisconsin.” She ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2012, losing to now-U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, and took a shot at becoming the Senate minority leader in 2023, losing to now-Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton).

Roys has sought to position herself as the firebrand candidate who will be able to take on the Trump administration. If she makes it through the primary, she’ll need to win in a purple state where statewide elections are often decided by a razor-thin margin of about 20,000 votes, including when Trump won the state in 2024.

Roys told the Examiner that her strong positions will help her in Wisconsin, not hurt.

“The most important thing right now is that we are in a really scary and pivotal moment for this country,” Roys said. During the campaign, Roys has confronted Tiffany’s support of Trump, including at one of his press conferences outside the state Capitol that she filmed and made into a campaign ad.

“People want a proven fighter. Someone new or inexperienced and a mealy-mouthed moderate is not going to cut it in this moment… If we have someone that isn’t capable of being aggressive and making Tom Tiffany accountable for his horrible record of hurting Wisconsinites… we’re not gonna win.”

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