Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District is one of those places where Democratic strategists perpetually insist this is their year to win. Perhaps the fifth time is the charm for their ongoing quest to defeat US Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Janesville).
Steil was first elected to the southeast Wisconsin seat in 2018 after former House Speaker Paul Ryan retired. In his four races, Steil has defeated four different Democrats and a couple of independent candidates.
The district itself has not had a Democratic winner since Peter Barca won a special election in 1993.
In 2026, Steil will be defending his seat against a challenge from emergency nurse Mitchell Berman, who emerged from a three-way Democratic primary.
“I never imagined running for Congress,” Berman said in a statement after becoming the nominee. “But I saw a culture of corruption in Washington that protects corporate special interests and insiders instead of solving problems, and knew I had to do something about it. This is our victory — and it is just the beginning of the fight to bring back real representation back to our district in Washington by beating Bryan Steil.”
Berman worked at the VA hospital in Milwaukee for 10 years and has been endorsed by the United Auto Workers union. The district has again been listed by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee as a top-tier priority.
Steil and Trump attack voting rights
Steil is on the frontline of President Donald Trump’s effort to limit Americans’ voting rights, as an author of the SAVE Act as well as his own bill that would greatly reduce the types of identification that could be used by people who want to register or vote. It would restrict voter-eligible IDs to a current driver’s license, military ID, passport, or tribal ID with a photo and expiration date. That would eliminate other forms of identification currently allowed for Wisconsin voters, including certificates of naturalization and university ID cards that include a student signature, date of issue, and an expiration date of two years or less after issue.
“These reforms will improve voter confidence, bolster election integrity, and make it easy to vote, but hard to cheat,” Steil said in a January statement introducing the bill.
Such limits on voting rights do not have enough support from fellow Republicans to pass on their own merits, so they have been attached to other bills, including Steil’s version of a bill that would limit stock trading by members of Congress. That bill also lacks the support it needs to pass because it would still allow members to buy private stocks, hold onto stocks owned prior to being elected to Congress, and stay involved in certain investment funds, all of which give appearances to conflicts of interest.
Similarly, support is lacking for a Steil-authored limit on cryptocurrency trading by members of Congress and other federal officials because, critics say, it doesn’t go as far as it should. The language currently under consideration, for example, would limit prosecution to the US attorney general rather than state attorneys general. With Trump personal attorney Todd Blanche as the new head of the US Department of Justice, there is concern that there will be no limits to the Trump family’s ability to enrich themselves — as seen in how Trump’s Treasury Department recently granted approval for a company run by Trump and his sons to operate as a type of bank, something unprecedented in US history.
As chair of the House Committee on Administration, Steil is also in a position to facilitate the release of US Capitol surveillance video of a July 2024 incident, when US Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Prairie du Chien) screamed at US Senate pages who were gazing up at the Capitol Dome. Steil has refused to release the video, citing privacy for the pages outweighs concerns about a congressman’s late night behavior.
