Your Voice, Your Vote: State Senate District 30

GREEN BAY, Wis. (WBAY) – November’s election will be the first under the state’s new legislative boundaries and has four state Senate races considered a walkout.

For an open seat in the Green Bay area, voters will choose between Republican Jim Rafter and Democrat Jamie Wall.

Under the new maps, this is a Senate district that gives Democrats a two-and-a-half-point advantage, according to a Marquette Law School analysis. However, this slight advantage does not cause either candidate to take anything for granted.

Both Jamie Wall and Jim Rafter are familiar faces to most voters who follow politics. Rafter serves as village president in Allouez, and Wall once ran for Congress.

Both say they are running to help bridge the partisan divide in Madison.

“The thing I hear the most is it might not be a problem, but almost an attitude is why can’t you guys, and sometimes I don’t say guys work together and they’re just trying to do something and I don’t think that it’s too much to expect,” said Jamie Wall, (D) candidate for Senate District 30.

“I understand that the governor is not talking to leadership and leadership is not talking to the governor,” said Jim Rafter, (R) candidate for Senate District 30. “What would I do? I would force the issue. Let’s treat each other with respect. Let’s figure out what we agree on, because on every issue you’re going to deal with there has to be common ground.”

Both candidates say the cost of living and affordable housing are big issues for voters this year, but it comes with Wisconsin running a budget surplus of more than $3 billion. For years, lawmakers have argued over what to do with that money.

“I would like to see that money come back into the community. Local governments are stretched just as school districts are stretched. Our roads five years ago for a residential street used to cost a million dollars a mile to rebuild a road. Today, it’s two million dollars a mile, and we can’t raise our taxes like that,” Rafter said.

Wall says she prefers to use the surplus for childcare initiatives and health care needs. It would also set aside money for public schools.

“All you need to know about this issue is that three of the four school districts here in my Senate district in my area have a referendum on the November ballot to ask taxpayers if they can raise property taxes to fund their operations,” Wall said. . “The long-term effect of all this is that you’re shifting more and more money from the state to local property taxes to fund schools, and if there’s a tax, people don’t like the property tax.”

This is also the district that is home to the Green Bay Correctional Institution, a prison that has faced accusations of unsanitary conditions, overcrowding and understaffing. Some MPs are now calling for its closure. Both Rafter and Wall say the state Department of Corrections needs an overhaul.

“My father worked in that prison for 34 years. He had to go home at night. He was on the good side of bars though,” Wall said. “That building is more than a hundred years old; everyone will tell you it’s outdated because of its design, it’s inefficient. It takes more staff to run it than a modern prison. So I think we can look at the limit to close that, but we have to look at other issues first before we can make that decision.”

“There are other states, including some quite conservative ones like Texas, that have had success with things like expanding alcohol and drug treatment for non-violent offenders, because a lot of these criminals, their problems are rooted in abuse issues of substances,” Wall said.

Rafter agrees with some of this, too.

“If I had a choice, I would reimagine the Department of Corrections. We could have a place where those who are going to be in prison for life have a good humane place to live, where those who are going to come back because they have made very poor judgment in life, where they can get the skills, the vocational training to that they need, to be able to return to the safety of our community,” said Rafter. “The reality is GBCI needs to be closed and we need to find a way to help DOC, the Department of Corrections do their job better.”

The race also drew a lot of spending, with ads running for and against both candidates.

Rafter says he’s focused on keeping taxes low and the size of government small.

“The only way the government can help is to start looking at itself. How many people do we have working for the state of Wisconsin. Do we need that many? Can we reduce the cost of running our government? When we reduce the cost of running government, I can tell you from first-hand experience, you can tax people less, and I think that’s terribly important,” Rafter said.

Wall says government should make people’s lives better, which is his goal if elected.

“I will work hard to try to make your life a little easier. I can’t promise to solve all of your problems or all of the state’s problems, but I want to be the person who helps bring people together in Madison and focus on the issues that matter to everyday people in Brown County, instead of just fighting mindless partisanship I’ve seen too much of,” Wall said.

Right now, Republicans control the state Senate by a wide margin. To change that, Democrats hope to win the four toss-up races and other races they see as competitive in 2026.