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Michael Hernandez, 30, a software developer in Racine who works from home, says he’s experienced increasingly frequent power outages in recent years. He’s frustrated with local opposition stalling grid infrastructure projects. “When it comes to infrastructure,” he said, “I’m very much a believer in the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” He identifies as “left-leaning,” in part because he believes Republicans’ policy solutions more often have unintended consequences.

Richard Singapori, 70, owns a 24-unit hotel in Kenosha. His monthly electrical bills this winter averaged more than $3,500. “That didn’t used to happen,” he said. The lifelong Republican said he voted for Democrats at the state and local level for the first time in at least 20 years on Tuesday.

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Paul Kiefer became Wisconsin Watch’s data-driven accountability reporter in September 2026, focusing largely on immigration and data reporting. He joined the newsroom in 2025 as a Roy W. Howard fellow. Paul grew up in Washington state and first set foot in a newsroom as a teenage producer-in-training at a Seattle public radio station. He went on to cover criminal justice in Washington for the Seattle news site PubliCola and InvestigateWest. He headed east in 2023, working as a state politics reporter for Delaware Public Media before earning a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Maryland and interning on the Washington Post’s metro desk.