Jodi Habush Sinykin sees potential in a newly-drawn State Senate district where voters are tired of the same old extremism

The Democratic challenger wants to protect women’s healthcare choices while Republican incumbent Sen. Duey Stroebel supports treating an 1849 law as a total abortion ban.

State Senate candidate Jodi Habush Sinykin of Whitefish Bay senses “palpable” enthusiasm and energy among voters, who see a chance in November to elect a Wisconsin Legislature more in touch with their constituents now that the old gerrymandered maps are gone.

“If people want change, they can’t vote in the same legislators who have gotten us in the same position over the last ten plus years,” Habush Sinykin said in an interview with UpNorthNews. “We need people who are willing to work across the aisle to allow us to step up in all these areas, whether it’s environmental contamination, conservation efforts, women’s healthcare and healthcare in general. Education, the safety of our communities, reducing taxes for retirees and young working folks. We have so many ways we can proceed. We just need the right legislators in there.”

Habush Sinykin is the Democratic challenger to Sen. Duey Stroebel (R-Cedarburg), who was first elected to the Legislature in 2011 and is the current state senator for the old 20th District. The new maps put him in the 8th Senate District, which includes Milwaukee suburbs in southern Ozaukee, southern Washington, northeastern Waukesha, and northern Milwaukee counties. The district is far less Republican and is seen as one of the Democrats’ best pick-up opportunities. The GOP currently has a two-thirds “supermajority” in the Senate, 22 Republicans to 11 Democrats.

Habush Sinykin said that as she knocks on doors and talks to voters in her district, many of them tell her that they are tired of extremism and partisan games in their state legislature.

“We need to have a state legislature that doesn’t just represent particular partisan interests, but actually represents the state as a whole by working together. That is a strong value that I have,” she said. “I’m a centrist in my political views. I have the skills and the tools to be able to bring Wisconsin back to that place where our democracy is thriving. Democracy isn’t just voting, it’s about having a government that represents us and works for us.”

Jodi Habush grew up in the 8th District, the daughter of trial attorney and community fixture Robert Habush. Long before her senate candidacy, there was a Harvard law education, college at the University of Michigan, and a blind date at age 16 to Dan Sinykin, set up by Dan’s twin sister—starting a friendship between the pair that years later blossomed into romance, marriage, and four children—now all in their 20s and part of a campaign that’s involving the whole family. 

“We’re a very close family. The kids help canvas. They come to events, they came to my (campaign) launch.”

Voters’ Top Issues

Habush Sinykin said reproductive freedom is the number one issue that voters are talking about at doors and at campaign events. She supports a full repeal of an arcane 1849 state law that some interpret as being a ban on all abortion. A Dane County judge has ruled the language in the law describes infanticide, not elective abortions—but the case is on appeal, and a more clearly written ban could become the law of the state again if Republicans have their way at some point in the future.

A father of eight children, Stroebel is one of the leading Republican voices against the protection of women’s reproductive healthcare rights. Stroebel sponsored a bill that would have implemented a 14-week abortion ban, voted against the repeal of the 1849 statute, and introduced a bill in 2021 that would have defunded Planned Parenthood clinics.

Stroebel also introduced a bill that would have amended the Wisconsin constitution to give legal “personhood” status to fertilized eggs and fetuses at every stage of development, threatening the existence of IVF and other fertility services for people who want to start or grow a family. A similar law in Alabama was used by that state’s supreme court to declare that embryos are children and that any embryos that were damaged or destroyed accidentally in the process of IVF could result in civil or criminal penalties for clinic staff.

Furthermore, Stroebel voted against a Right To Contraception bill that would have protected contraceptive access in Wisconsin.

Habush Sinykin blasts Stroebel’s actions as “too extreme” for constituents of the 8th Senate District.

“The majority of Wisconsinites support reproductive freedom and support Roe v. Wade-type safeguards and guarantees,” she said. “So his position on abortion, his position on opposing IVF, and also his efforts to limit and ban IVF are a really big deal in my district.”

“The people I’m talking to who are young families, many either are couples who are trying to start a family or they’re starting them a little bit later than 20 years ago, so they often do need IVF and fertility doctors.”

She points out that Wisconsin already has a shortage of doctors who are trained to deliver babies, and Wisconsin hospitals with Ob-Gyn residency programs saw an 8% drop in applications in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision by the US Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade’s abortion rights—and that if Stroebel is elected, his policies restricting women’s reproductive health care will make things worse.

“We lost a lot of medical students and doctors during the year plus that the 1849 abortion ban was in place,” she said.

Stroebel Was the Only Vote Against Extended Care for New Moms

Wisconsin is now one of only two states, along with Arkansas, that are refusing to accept federal funds so that Medicaid can provide stable, affordable healthcare coverage to new moms for up to 12 months following childbirth. For new moms in Wisconsin on BadgerCare, coverage runs out after just 60 days.

The bill to extend care to 12 months passed the Senate, 32-1. Stroebel was the only senator to vote against extended care for new moms. 

[The bill has not been taken up by the Assembly, even though nearly half of the total membership is listed as a co-sponsor—because Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) dismisses Medicaid as welfare and the giving away of “free stuff.”]

“It shows where his values and where his principles are,” Habush Sinykin said. “He doesn’t want women to get medical treatment in case there is postpartum clotting or depression. It’s a very dangerous time for women in those months after delivery.”

“We’re letting federal money sit in Washington, DC, rather than helping these few thousand moms in Wisconsin who need this care but otherwise can’t get it.”

Stroebel Is Blocking Millions to Clean Up Contaminated Water

Habush Synikin said voters tell her that they are fed up with the extreme partisanship of the current Legislature, on display most prominently through its powerful, budget-writing Joint Committee on Finance—a Republican-dominated group that is currently holding hostage several spending items despite already being approved by legislators and signed into law by Gov. Tony Evers.

Stroebel is a vice chair of the committee.

For more than a year the committee has been holding up $125 million to clean up water contaminated with industrial chemicals known as PFAS. The funds would help offset climbing costs for communities with potentially unsafe drinking water—communities that are already cash-strapped due to revenue limits imposed by the Republican Legislature. 

The Joint Finance Committee has also refused to release $15 million that has been designated to help Chippewa Valley leaders deal with a jobs and healthcare crisis. And the panel continues to sit on $50 million designated for a literacy assistance program for children in Wisconsin’s public schools. In each case, Republicans are trying to extract concessions from Evers rather than releasing the money as intended.

“We have been held hostage to this committee for over a year,” said Habush Sinykin, who grew up with a special needs sister and recognizes bullying, whether personal or political.

“If I would see bullying of kids on the school bus, I would stand up. I’ve always tried to do what I can to affect change and correct injustice.”

Habush Sinykin’s Environmental Record

That point of view led to her working for years on legal issues of conservation and the environment and enforcing the laws that protect natural resources. In 2006, Habush Sinykin was asked to represent environmental interests on a special legislative committee studying the Great Lakes Water Resources Compact, a group charged with drafting statutory protections for “our precious Great Lakes resources” including protections for groundwater.

Habush Sinykin has taught water law and environmental justice classes at UW-Milwaukee’s School of Freshwater Sciences for six years. But she has also worked on protecting Wisconsin’s wildlife, seeing the interconnectedness of “our ecosystems at large” to the economy. She was so incensed by a politically botched wolf hunt in February 2021—when conservative members of the Natural Resources Board set up a process that allowed far too many permits and led to a kill far above recommended levels—that she co-authored an impassioned opinion column for the  Washington Post. 

“Native American tribes revere wolves,” she wrote. She cited a survey showing that a majority of Americans including “many hunters believe that wolves, like other wildlife, have intrinsic value beyond a trophy pelt.” 

Gray wolves were later restored to the endangered species list in February 2022 by a federal judge.

In contrast to Habush Sinykin’s record of environmental conservation, Stroebel received a paltry 11% score from Wisconsin Conservation Voters this past year. Governor Evers received a 90% score.

End the Defunding of Public Education

The defunding of the Universities of Wisconsin System, which serves 162,500 students, is another deep concern that comes up as Habush Sinykin speaks with voters.

Her future constituents fear that the system is in jeopardy. “We are losing ranking, resources, and faculty to neighboring states and elsewhere,” she said, noting Wisconsin should want its students to stay in the state once they graduate.

”Those graduates buy homes, they start businesses, they have families.”

Wisconsin also has an aging population, so she said it makes sense that legislators should pursue policies that keep younger people in the state. The US Census Bureau estimates that nearly 26% of Wisconsinites will be 60 and older by 2030, an increase of 36% from 2012. 

Stroebel’s record of attacking public education in general is in keeping with Republicans’ overall strategy. He has tried to make it harder for local communities to hold referendums in which they can vote to raise local taxes to fund their public schools, if that is their wish.

Read More: Click Here to Check the UpNorthNews Voting Guide

Back on the trail, Jodi Habush Sinykin said husband Dan provided one of the best surprises of the campaign—showing up unexpectedly on a hot July day with fresh-baked chocolate chip banana cake while she was out talking to voters. 

“He brought milk, he brought plates. It was just a huge shot in the arm,” she said. “That culinary banana cake support really hit the spot!”