‘Action is the antidote to despair’ – Sarah Keyeski runs to be a voice for rural Wisconsin

A Joan Baez song lyric helped inspire the creation of Lift Lodi for the mother turned organizer turned Senate candidate.

When Sarah Keyeski says that she wants to be a voice for rural Wisconsin, it isn’t just because a large portion of her district is comprised of rural counties.

The resident of Lodi, population 3,209, grew up with her four siblings on a dairy farm in Cashton, where she spent summers baling hay and picking rocks out of the fields.

Keyeski loved the closeness that she developed on the farm with her brothers and sisters—“we were always together”—but she also credits her rural upbringing for developing her “really strong work ethic,” something that will come in handy if she is elected to represent the 178,000 residents of the 14th Senate District, which covers Richland and Sauk counties, most of Columbia County, and other surrounding areas.

“You always had something you needed to be doing, whether it was bringing in the wood since we had a wood-fired stove in our home or feeding the animals or mowing the lawn,” she told UpNorthNews in an interview.

“My mom always hung out the clothes to dry—we didn’t have a dryer, and she also had a hand-cranking washing machine,” she recalls.”She always just thought they were healthier. So I learned some really basic salt of the earth stuff.”

Along with managing the family farm, her dad had a union job working for the Burlington Northern Railroad and her mom was a part-time nurse.

Young Sarah Keyeski went to the local public school where she stood fifth as a straight-A student in her graduating class of 49, and her family’s life centered around her church community. 

“We were involved with potlucks, raising money for children in a third-world country,” she said. “This throughline of compassion was really important growing up, making sure that you looked out for one another.”

“When a farmer was hurt, you helped bring in the crops. When a mom had a new baby, you provided a meal … I think just caring about people was also really central to what I saw with my family.”

It was because of her affection for rural communities and small towns that Keyeski and her husband chose to move to Lodi in 2017 and make a home for their blended family of six kids.

“Raising our children in a small town was really important because that’s what I was raised in,” she said, explaining that she wanted her kids to have a wholesome upbringing.

Now, even though her newly-drawn district is “a little less rural now” with Wisconsin’s non-gerrymandered maps, she wants the voters to know that she is very focused on rural needs.

“I want to help protect our small communities. I want to make sure that we have jobs that are sustained in our communities so families don’t have to lose their children to big cities,” she said.

It was protecting and sustaining Lodi during the difficult times of the pandemic that first drew Keyeski into public service. 

“It became quite divisive around mask-wearing, and critical race theory was a conversation that was brought forward with little relevance to what was happening in our town,” Keyeski explained. “There was a lot of hostility toward the school board and the decision to shut down our school for a period of time with the advice they were getting from doctors and people in public health.”

“What I understood is that they were doing the best that they could with the information that they had. They were trying their best. They cared about kids, too,” she continued. “I just felt that they were in such a hard position that I felt was so unfair and unkind … I felt that we really needed to honor their efforts and treat them well.”

Keyeski said that it was despairing for her to see the town that she had chosen to raise her family in was “fracturing.”

She recounted to UpNorthNews that she came across a quote from the legendary folk singer Joan Baez, who advised that “action was the antidote to despair.” 

“A lightning bolt hit me and I was like, gosh, that is the music that I need to follow.”

She decided that the way to reconnect residents was by asking them to come together for projects that would provide service to others—to get “outside of ourselves” and to “uplift Lodi.”

That idea became the start of a non-profit she established called “Lift Lodi,” where community members could “serve our elderly neighbors by raking their lawns, by painting a fence that we’re all now going to enjoy, by planting a tree over at the primary school that kids are going to be able to use someday in the shade.”

“It gave me a way to channel my energy and despair into something good and it was lovely,” she said. 

The first year, 200 Lodi residents participated and the year after that, 250. 

It was her leadership at that time of crisis for the town that led a friend to suggest that she consider running for the Wisconsin Senate.

The friend, an “older gentleman,” reminded her of her dad who had passed away but had always been “a man of service.”

“I almost felt as if I was being asked out of my civic duty to do something and it was hard to say no because of what was already happening in our country. I was so concerned about the taking away of reproductive rights, the decrease of funding in public schools and the challenges in gun safety.”

One fight she’s willing to take on is over the Republican-dominated legislature’s sustained underfunding of public education for 12 years, while directing taxpayer money to school vouchers, which are primarily used by wealthier families for private schools.

Her Republican opponent, Sen. Joan Ballweg, who no longer lives in the redrawn district, has been a supporter of the school voucher system.

“I think that’s fundamentally wrong,” asserted Keyeski. “I think our public dollars need to stay with our public schools. It is draining the resources for our children and that’s a travesty. And again, especially for our small communities that don’t even necessarily have a charter school, but funding is being taken away.”

Keyeski can see that firsthand in Lodi’s schools, one of which her 14-year-old twin daughters attend. 

“The class sizes have had to get bigger and the offerings in some ways have had to be limited,” she said.

She sees that the school system isn’t getting enough funding from the state  to provide special needs students with the services they require and the board is having to “go to referendum just for operational costs and people are upset.”

“I want us to protect good funding for our public schools because they’re the cornerstone of our community.”

Keyeski also points to Ballweg’s stance against reproductive freedom, which she believes is not in alignment with the majority of local voters.

Ballweg “has written an amendment for fetal personhood,” which gives the same rights to a fertilized egg and fetus as every person.

“I mean, that’s extreme. She is not supportive of having rape or incest be considered as an option for abortion,” Keyeski said. 

Ballweg has voted consistently in support of positions taken by Wisconsin Right To Life, though she did support Medicaid expansion to cover moms for 12 months after birth.

Keyeski describes herself as not “a cookie-cutter Democrat.” 

“I want to be able to have a nuanced voice that recognizes that some issues are very complicated,” and that includes support for local police.

“I understand the implications of having a job that is asking you to be at a level of hyper [alert]. Stress has implications psychologically and physically. So I think making sure that we have the resources for police, making sure that we care about their health and well-being … is very important,” she stressed.

As Keyeski goes door to door speaking with voters, she hears former President Donald Trump’s Project 2025 plan “starting to seep into the ether.” Project 2025 outlines how Trump can try to enforce the 1873 Comstock Act, for example, to end safe abortion care access nationwide.

“People are concerned about how many rights are being stripped away… women are a bit more activated by this because it’s hitting us first with the [1849] abortion ban that happened,” she said. 

Now that Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, are leading the presidential campaign, Keyeski is already seeing positive downstream effects for her race as well. 

“I am so encouraged because the momentum of increased volunteer signups, donations, and support for our campaign has really increased.”

As for how Keyeski is managing to juggle her husband, 6 kids, and a state Senate campaign, she describes herself as “a plate spinner in a circus.”

“Luckily I’ve leaned toward having my children be somewhat independent for years… so my kids have been washing their own clothes for years … they know how to make a meal,” she said. “If there’s a need, a sorrow… I am still able to connect with everybody, every day.”

And as the Nov. 5 election gets closer, Keyeski is thankful that she is running for the Senate.

“I can’t imagine doing anything better right now. Otherwise I would sit and fret,” she said.

“I know I’m doing everything I possibly can and that feels so good!”