Politics
Legalize Marijuana To Fund Broadband Access Expansion, Wisconsin Democratic Candidates For Governor Say
With a year to go until Wisconsin voters are set to elect their next governor, the majority of the current candidates are making clear that they will support efforts to legalize marijuana—in part to fund public programs such as increased access to broadband.
Wisconsin Rep. Francesca Hong (D) kicked off the cannabis conversation during a candidate forum on Thursday, responding to a question about how to pay for expanded broadband access with a simple solution: “Legalize weed.”
“The revenue that comes in will be able to invest in fiber optic and high-speed internet in many different companies across the state,” Hong said.
Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez (D) said, “I don’t disagree,” noting that Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) routinely jokes about how his state is benefitting from ongoing prohibition in Wisconsin because its residents are going across the border to buy cannabis and contributing to his state’s tax coffers.
He “thanks us all the time for the amount of Wisconsin tax dollars that go into, actually, Illinois and now Michigan and Minnesota,” she said.
Wisconsin Sen. Kelda Roys (D) said she’s “all for legalizing weed—and for that matter, abortion as well.”
And Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley (D) also said, “I agree with marijuana legalization as well.”
Democratic candidate Missy Hughes, the former CEO of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, similarly voiced support for legalization at the debate.
Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann (R), the lone Republican on the stage, declined to endorse the reform, instead focusing his response on broadband access.
The forum took place weeks after Wisconsin senators took up a recently filed Republican-led bill that would legalize medical marijuana in the state.
Senate President Mary Felzkowski (R) and Sen. Patrick Testin (R) filed the legislation, and the Senate Health Committee debated the proposal at a hearing late last month, taking testimony from patients and other advocates. Members didn’t vote on the bill, but the chair said the panel would be advancing it “fairly quickly,” potentially at its next meeting this month.
Wisconsin’s GOP Assembly speaker said last month that he hopes lawmakers in the state can “find a consensus” on legislation to legalize medical marijuana. But he added that the new cannabis bill filed by his Republican leadership counterpart in the Senate is “unlikely” to pass his chamber because it is “way too broad and way too wide-ranging.
As the 2025 session was set to get underway, Felzkowski said she was “hoping to have a conversation” in the legislature about legalizing medical marijuana this year—though the Republican Assembly speaker still represented “an obstacle,” she added.
The Senate leader has previously sponsored medical cannabis legislation in past sessions, formally introduced the new legislation.
Meanwhile, a Republican candidate for governor of Wisconsin who has since left the race said in July that he was “open to considering different opportunities” when it comes to legalizing medical or adult-use marijuana in the state, though he has provided little in the way of specifics so far.
Current Gov. Tony Evers (D), who supports legalizing cannabis, isn’t seeking re-election—but he said in June that if his party can take control of the legislature, the state can “finally” legalize marijuana so that residents don’t have to go to neighboring Illinois to visit its adult-use market.
Separately in June, a poll from Marquette Law School found that two in three Wisconsin voters support legalizing marijuana.
The survey found that support for cannabis reform has generally increased over time since the institution first started tracking public opinion on legalization in 2013, with 67 percent of voters now backing the policy change. That’s 17 percentage points higher than the 2013 results.
Democrats are the most likely to favor legalizing cannabis, at 88 percent, followed by independents (79 percent). However, a majority of Republicans (56 percent) said they’re still opposed to adult-use legalization.
Underscoring the importance of party control, the state’s Republican-controlled Senate and Assembly this summer rejected another attempt to legalize marijuana, defeating amendments to budget legislation that would have ended prohibition in the state and established new medical and recreational cannabis programs.
Evers has routinely attempted to change that policy as part of his budget requests—and Democratic leaders have similarly pushed for reform.
Republicans in the legislature also cut the marijuana provisions from a state budget proposal in May, as they’ve done in past sessions.
Despite Republicans’ move to cut legalization from the budget legislation, party leaders recently acknowledged that the debate over medical marijuana legalization is “not going to go away,” and there’s hope it can be resolved this session.
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“I don’t think anyone is naive enough to think that marijuana and THC products aren’t present in the state of Wisconsin when they are readily available over state lines, so I think we need to come to an answer on this,” Assembly Majority Leader Rep. Tyler August (R) said in February. “I’m hopeful that we can.”
“If we’re going to call it medical marijuana, it needs to be treated like a pharmaceutical. But the marijuana debate is going to be something that is not going to go away,” Sen. Dan Feyen (R), the assistant majority leader, said at the time. “The margins are tighter.”
There have been repeated attempts to legalize medical marijuana in the legislature over recent years, including the introduction of legislation from Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R) that called for a limited program facilitated through state-run dispensaries. That proved controversial among his Republican colleagues, however, and it ultimately stalled out last year.
Evers previewed his plan to include marijuana legalization in his budget in January, while also arguing that residents of the state should be allowed to propose new laws by putting binding questions on the ballot—citing the fact that issues such as cannabis reform enjoy sizable bipartisan support while the GOP-controlled legislature has repeatedly refused to act.
Previously, in 2022, the governor signed an executive order to convene a special legislative session with the specific goal of giving people the right to put citizen initiatives on the ballot, raising hopes among advocates that cannabis legalization could eventually be decided by voters. The GOP legislature did not adopt the proposal, however.
Evers said in December that marijuana reform is one of several key priorities the state should pursue in the 2025 session, as lawmakers work with a budget surplus.
Days after he made the remarks, a survey found the reform would be welcomed by voters in rural parts of the state. Nearly two thirds (65 percent) said they support legalizing cannabis.
Last May, the governor said he was “hopeful” that the November 2024 election would lead to Democratic control of the legislature, in part because he argued it would position the state to finally legalize cannabis.
“We’ve been working hard over the last five years, several budgets, to make that happen,” he said at the time. “I know we’re surrounded by states with recreational marijuana, and we’re going to continue to do it.”
A Wisconsin Democratic Assemblymember tried to force a vote on a medical cannabis compromise proposal last year, as an amendment to an unrelated kratom bill, but he told Marijuana Moment he suspects leadership intentionally pulled that legislation from the agenda at the last minute to avoid a showdown on the issue.
Meanwhile, the state Department of Revenue released a fiscal estimate of the economic impact of a legalization bill from then-Sen. Melissa Agard (D) in 2023, projecting that the reform would generate nearly $170 million annually in tax revenue.
A legislative analysis requested by lawmakers estimated that Wisconsin residents spent more than $121 million on cannabis in Illinois alone in 2022, contributing $36 million in tax revenue to the neighboring state.
Evers and other Democrats have since at least last January insisted that they would be willing to enact a modest medical marijuana program, even if they’d prefer more comprehensive reform.
Photo courtesy of Chris Wallis // Side Pocket Images.
