Preserving the beauty of southwest Wisconsin is key to Elizabeth Grabe’s run for Wisconsin Assembly

The competitive biker is part of a different kind of race as she seeks to protect women’s reproductive rights and improve education funding for Wisconsin’s children.

When Elizabeth Grabe was first asked to run for the Wisconsin Legislature in the 51st Assembly District, her first thought was, “Why not?”

“I don’t shy away from hard things. I’ve done all these really big things in life that most people would be like, ‘no, I don’t want to do that,’” she told UpNorthNews.

As Grabe, the Democratic nominee, has campaigned throughout the district that covers all of Lafayette and Iowa counties and parts of Grant and Dane, she’s collected feedback from voters about longtime incumbent Rep. Todd Novak. While constituents tell Grabe that Novak makes a point of seeming to listen to them, he will turn around and vote in lockstep with other members of the Republican Party in the Assembly.

Grabe decided to run for the Assembly because she “felt compelled by duty” to take up the challenge. 

“A lot of that came from my involvement with the local Rotary Club where the motto is ‘Service above self,’” she explained.

Familiar with long marathons and difficult challenges.

A former competitive cyclist who is a veteran of several centurion (100-mile) cycling races, Grabe once completed a 170-mile Cross Florida cycling event in eight hours. The Mount Horeb-raised Grabe won 11 state cycling championships in Florida, where she studied at the University of Miami.

She feels that competitive cycling, especially the long distance rides she’s done, have given her concentration, focus, and discipline, which she has brought to her professional work as a fitness coach and realtor. Now it can be used to help her best represent the residents of the 51st District. 

An important part of Grabe’s candidacy is focused on maintaining the environmental beauty of southwest Wisconsin’s Driftless Area.

Her family moved from Madison to a farm outside Mount Horeb when she was 13.

“My mother was really the first person to teach me through her influence to enjoy nature. She used to take us to do things like go and pick wild asparagus,” she remembered.

It was a colleague on Mount Horeb’s Sustainability and Natural Resources committee, where Grabe is a member, who first encouraged her to run.

“Nature’s so important to me … I learned a lot about conservation and stewardship from my dad. And he donated 19 acres (of our land) to expand Stewart Lake County Park. I feel as though one way of carrying through in my father’s steps, maybe in a bigger way, is to be a steward and run for office to do things for constituents and still try to protect the land,” said Grabe, who now manages her family farm.

She has enrolled more and more of the acreage into conservation programs, taking the land out of use for traditional agriculture and instead “establishing native plants” to help build back the soil’s fertility.

“It’s really been a slow grind to build back soil. It’s easy to lose, hard to build,” she explained.

The outcome of the District 51 race could determine control of the Assembly, as Democrats hope to flip the seat and the chamber. That’s important in part to Grabe to show Wisconsinites will reject the kind of toxic politics Donald Trump has brought to the country.

“It’s a concern of mine because I think it’s giving other people, in day-to-day life, a green light to play the victim card for bad behavior,” she said of Trump’s rhetoric and actions. “I think it’s setting a really dangerous precedent because I don’t feel like he’s a good role model.”

She’s particularly upset by how former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, have spread lies about the people of Springfield, Ohio. 

“The people of Springfield are experiencing hardship because of something Donald Trump said. Schools are being closed because of bomb threats. There’s such inflammatory language going on,” she said. “I just believe in not making things up.”

Reproductive rights is another one of the key issues that propelled her into running for office.

“When they started attacking women’s rights and when things just really kind of veered off to the right, I just couldn’t sit back anymore,” Grabe said. “And that’s why I’m running as a Democrat. I need to be with a party that identifies more with my values.”

Novak in contrast was one of the sponsors of a 14-week abortion ban that was proposed in the Assembly. He also gets high marks from Wisconsin Right To Life, which seeks the most extreme interpretation of an 1849 statute as a total abortion ban.

Preserving reproductive freedom is an issue that comes up frequently as Grabe knocks on doors and meets her potential constituents. Younger women in particular tell her that they are shocked that Roe v. Wade was overturned.

Grabe has been knocking on about 250 doors per week, talking to voters. She has learned that mental health issues are a deep concern for some of her constituents. Farmers are under tremendous amounts of pressure and some are suffering from a feeling of isolation, with not as many people going to community events and churches.

Grabe says a number of moms tell her that they have special needs kids and the schools aren’t providing enough of the resources needed for the programs and supervision of their children. State aid only reimburses a school district for 31.5 percent of its special education costs, forcing districts to turn to property taxpayers for the rest. 

However, the Republican-led Legislature set up private voucher schools to receive 90 percent reimbursement of their special education costs.

Grandparents also raise the issue to Grabe of public schools being underfunded. 

“They’re very much concerned about the future of the schools for their grandkids,” she said.

Mostly, constituents are pleasantly surprised to see her at their door.

“They tell you, ‘Hey, I’ve never had a politician come to the door.’ And they really appreciate that and they open up,” she explained. “They’re not asking me to do anything but just to be present with them in that moment and just be an active listener. I don’t try to over promise.”

But she does hope to bridge the divisions between Democrats and Republicans in the Legislature in order to enact solutions for the Wisconsinites in her district. 

She believes that she can utilize her experience as a Realtor—“doing negotiations and having empathy for what the other side is thinking or feeling and what motivates them”—to find compromises that both sides can agree on.

“Hopefully, I can draw on our similarities and our love for the state of Wisconsin and the welfare of the people in the state of Wisconsin to find solutions,” she said.

As she runs her campaign and meets with voters, she says she couldn’t do it all without a partner like her husband Jim cheering her on.

“He drives me canvassing. I couldn’t do this without a supportive spouse.”

One of her three sisters, who lives in Tennessee, has also started a postcard writing club in support of her candidacy.

When Grabe looks back on her childhood of riding horses, learning how to drive a tractor, breaking trails in the family’s woods to create a cross-country course, she felt that Wisconsin “was a type of utopia.”

But then with political gerrymandering of legislative districts came divisiveness and she saw “a shift happen right before my eyes that felt like fire.” Democracy felt like it was on fire to her.

She hopes that with the new, fairer state maps and the election of new legislators with open minds like herself, the state can get back to a place that is closer to that utopia.

“I’m not afraid of challenging things,” she said. “I don’t want to be a saber-rattler. I want to be a person of action.”