Wausau-area voters on Nov. 3 will pick Wisconsin’s first new governor in eight years and decide whether to rewrite the state constitution in three ways that could outlast any officeholder.
Gov. Tony Evers is not seeking a third term, setting up Wisconsin’s first open race for governor since 2010. The 7th Congressional District seat that includes Wausau is open, too, because U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany is running for governor. Every ballot in the state also carries three proposed constitutional amendments. That is the most on a single statewide ballot since April 1995, according to the Wisconsin Blue Book.
The amendments would limit the governor’s partial veto, bar governments from closing places of worship during emergencies and ban “preferential treatment” based on race, sex and other characteristics in public hiring, schools and contracting. Bryna Godar, an attorney with the University of Wisconsin Law School’s State Democracy Research Initiative, told USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin that sharing the ballot with a governor’s race “could impact how much attention these amendments receive.”…