Wisconsin News

Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez ends bid for Wisconsin governor

July 18, 2026

Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez has ended her bid to be Wisconsin’s next governor, capping a tumultuous string of events that saw her campaign fall apart seemingly overnight.

Rodriguez announced her decision five days after revealing that she had fired her campaign manager, Kara Spencer, for what she said was the “serious mismanagement” of her finance reports.

In a statement issued Friday, Rodriguez said she had gotten into the race for governor because she wanted what was best for Wisconsin.

“That hasn’t changed,” she said. “And because I believe that, I cannot in good conscience allow these questions to become a cloud over an election that Democrats need to win. Wisconsin deserves better than that.”

Rodriguez said her manager had double-counted numerous donations, leaving her with hundreds of thousands of dollars less in the bank than she had expected.

Rodriguez also said it was her manager who made the decision to issue a July 7 press release promoting a $1 million TV ad buy despite her campaign’s hidden financial woes. Rodriguez told reporters Monday that she confronted her manager days later when she noticed the ads had not run.

Her campaign eventually announced another ad buy, this one much smaller. But she reported only $35,000 cash on hand to carry her through the closing days of the race — a miniscule sum for the closing days of a statewide primary for governor.

It left a situation where one piece of bad news amplified the other. Had Rodriguez stayed in the race, she would have faced repeated questions of how she could manage an entire state when she couldn’t keep track of her own campaign. Running TV ads could help her change the narrative, but she could no longer afford them.

Anthony Chergosky, an associated professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, said the fundraising news was also a disaster for Rodriguez’s campaign because it made it hard for her to raise any money going forward.

“Who’s going to be lining up to cut her a check right now?” Chergosky said. “Campaigns have a way of getting into this death spiral with fundraising.”

After finance reports were released by all the campaigns Wednesday, Rodriguez had far less cash on hand than all of her Democratic rivals, including Madison Rep. Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist. In the weeks before she dropped out, some Democrats had seen Rodriguez as an alternative to Hong, whose version of progressivism excites a portion of the party’s base but is untested in a Wisconsin general election.

Rodriguez also had less cash than Mandela Barnes, the former lieutenant governor who narrowly lost a race for U.S. Senate in 2022, Madison Sen. Kelda Roys and Joel Brennan, a former top secretary in Gov. Tony Evers’ administration.

Just weeks ago, everything seemed to be going Rodriguez’s way. She won a straw poll of activists at the state Democratic Party convention in June, and after two Democrats — Missy Hughes and David Crowley — dropped out of the race for governor, they quickly endorsed her.

The $1 million ad buy Rodriguez’s campaign promised before everything fell apart was set to come at just the right time. It would have been on the air while the Marquette Law School Poll was in the field for its first survey of Democratic voters since March. If Rodriguez polled well, the thinking went, it could build even more momentum.

But when that facade slipped away, it left Rodriguez especially vulnerable. Her pitch to voters had increasingly become that she was the candidate who could win in November. Without the money she had promised — and with such a glaring vulnerability — her electability pitch became a tough sell.

Rodriguez remains Wisconsin’s lieutenant governor, a job she won in 2022 after flipping a state Assembly seat from red to blue in the 2020 election. But the way this campaign ended will make it challenging for her to build on her past success to run for higher office again.

While she embraced parts of the governor’s record, she did not present herself as a Tony Evers candidate, and Evers never endorsed her candidacy. Shortly after Rodriguez suspended her campaign, sources close to Crowley and Evers said there were discussions about Crowley getting back into the race, with the governor’s backing.

The winner of the Democratic primary on Aug. 11 is all but certain to face U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, a Republican from Minocqua who has spent millions of dollars blanketing the state with ads that have gone largely unanswered. The state Democratic Party, a fundraising juggernaut, has said it stands ready to support whoever wins the primary in the months leading up to the November election, but has remained quiet for now.